


The Recruit

by damnedscribblingwoman



Series: PHOENIX [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Bonding, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Drama, Horcruxes, Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty, Team as Family, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-19 02:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20649962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnedscribblingwoman/pseuds/damnedscribblingwoman
Summary: In which the Order of the Phoenix sends Hermione to kill Draco and she ends up recruiting him instead.





	1. Then Along Came a Spider

**Author's Note:**

> A very big thank you to Cali for beta-reading this story and for being the best cheerleader a writer could ask for. 
> 
> Written for Round 10 of the Dramione Remix.
> 
> The original remix couple is Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov.
> 
> About them: Clint Barton, Hawkeye, is a SHIELD agent and Avenger best known for his unusual choice of weapon, the bow. Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, is a former soviet spy Clint recruits for SHIELD after being sent to eliminate her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small content warning for this chapter regarding suicidal ideation (and, indirectly, attempt) by one of the characters. See notes at the end for more details.

"Granger, do you have him?"

Neville's voice echoes inside her head, but Hermione does not move a muscle. Her breathing is a study in deliberation as she holds the tension of the bowstring.

"I've got him."

The Royal Mile is bustling with people — locals, tourists, men in kilts playing the bagpipe for loose change from passers-by. The sun peers only occasionally from behind the clouds, but it's a warm day in late May and the city is out in force. So is her target, if appearances are to be believed. Outside a small café sits Draco Malfoy himself, his wand on the table next to an uneaten slice of treacle tart and a cappuccino he hasn't touched. A Death Eater in a Muggle café, in the middle of Muggle Edinburgh in broad daylight. What's the world coming to?

Malfoy gets the odd side glance from passing Muggles — he isn't exactly being discreet, what with the wand and the robes and the way a spoon is hovering a few inches above the table top, spinning slowly — but while some of them briefly hold up their phones for a picture, no one approaches him and little wonder. Hermione can feel the frosty aura around him all the way up on her rooftop.

"It's a go." Neville again, his voice steady and familiar. "Take him out."

Hermione exhales slowly, slightly correcting her aim for the subtle increase in wind and keeping a careful watch on the flow of Muggles in the area: a tour group coming up the street, two girls taking a selfie in front of a nearby whiskey shop, a waiter waltzing out of the café and heading for the table next to Malfoy's. There's mathematics involved, calculations — wind, altitude, humidity, the maddeningly variable patterns of people going about their business — but mostly Hermione feels it deep in her bones, the clear, perfect certainty that her arrow will find its mark. The split second before she releases her hold on the bowstring, however, Malfoy glances up, a slight, brief, jarring tell that lasts but a fraction of a second.

"He knows I'm here," she says, her eyes scanning the area for signs of trouble or danger or a trap.

Nothing for several seconds, and then Neville's voice again. "There are no other Death Eaters in the area. We have wards around a three-mile radius."

Not a trap then. Malfoy is alone. He's alone, and he knows she's there and there's no hope of anyone coming or of him getting out.

"Take him out now." The order echoes inside her mind, but Hermione holds still. On the ground below, Malfoy cuts a piece of the treacle tart with his fork and lifts it to his lips. He's calm. He's relaxed. He's in no way aware of the assassin with an arrow pointed at his head. Honest.

Hermione snorts, lowering her bow. To any of the surrounding Muggles, Draco Malfoy is a picture of poise and composure. To her, he looks like a man at the end of his rope.

"Granger, that's an order." Parkinson now, voice like a whip. PHOENIX's deputy director is not fond of insubordination. She's not terribly fond of Hermione, either.

"Permission to go down to the street," Hermione says, standing up and dropping her shooting glove to the ground, next to her bow.

"Denied," Parkinson says, at the same time as Neville's, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking dead men tell no tales. He knows we're here and he's not running. If it's not a trap, then he either wants us to take him out or he wants us to take him in, and he's more valuable alive than dead."

Silence on the other end of the telephatic bond. Hermione waits it out. She can almost picture the argument in the command post a few streets away. Not that Neville ever argues, of course. He nods calmly and smiles politely and stands unmovable in the face of all opposition, somehow always getting exactly his own way. How, Hermione isn't sure. Witchcraft, no doubt. Probably one of those things they teach at Hogwarts, though she wouldn't know. What she does know is that Neville Longbottom could convince anyone of anything by simply standing there, looking reasonable and unflappable.

"Permission granted," Parkinson finally says in the tone of one not convinced of anything, but who'll go along with it anyway and take comfort from the knowledge that there's always a chance Hermione might get herself killed in the process, which is no more than mouthy assets who don't know their place deserve.

"Remember there are Muggles around." Neville now. "At the first sign of trouble, we're moving in."

"Yes, sir," Hermione says and Disapparates.

An elderly Asian lady yelps, startled, when Hermione Apparates next to her, but most other Muggles don't spare her a second glance. Wizards are old news, and in PHOENIX's black uniform, not very different from what Muggle security forces use the world over, Hermione doesn't look outlandish enough to merit even the casual interest of tourists looking for photo opportunities.

She walks up to the café, making no effort to disguise her approach, and Malfoy watches her with a face so deliberately devoid of expression that it's almost a tell in itself.

"Shouldn't you be off somewhere kicking Pygmy Puffs and torturing Muggles?" She drops her wand on the table next to his and leans back on the empty chair.

Cold grey eyes meet hers. "Shouldn't you be off somewhere playing judge, jury and executioner with your Muggle toy?"

It's supposed to be a taunt, no doubt, a dig about all the cold, ugly things hiding behind PHOENIX's self-righteous facade. But to Hermione, Malfoy sounds mostly disappointed. Disappointed and disapproving, as if he's been personally inconvenienced by her failure to put an arrow through his throat.

"What can I say?" She steals his fork and helps herself to the treacle tart. "It's hungry work. I was due for my ten."

Silence falls between them. She eats and watches him, and watches him watching her. He looks different in person, far removed from the man she's seen in newspapers and magazines and surveillance photos. The Draco Malfoy in those is handsome and engaging, in the careless, effortless way wealthy, posh people so often are. He chats and smiles and charms his way around political rallies, charity galas and society events — inoffensive, a pillar of the community, above reproach. It's a pretty piece of fiction, as effective a mask as the intricate silver monstrosity he wears in the other surveillance footage she's studied.

The man in front of her is neither engaging nor charming, and his features are too pinched and severe for him to be called handsome. There's an honesty to it that Hermione likes, which makes her wonder if that too is for show, one more mask suited to the occasion. There's no telling. She doubts even he can tell the difference anymore.

"There are PHOENIX agents all around us," she says. "And we've warded off the street. There's nowhere for you to go."

He grins, a vicious mimicry of a smile, and breaks off a piece of pie crust, popping it into his mouth and licking his fingers clean. "You think a few wards and the sorry excuse for wizards you call agents can stop me from leaving if I choose to?"

"I think if you meant to blast your way out of here you wouldn't have shown your face."

"That's a bold assumption."

The entire world stands still for a heartbeat. And then their chairs clatter loudly against the flagstones as they jump to their feet, hands darting for the wands on the table. Malfoy is faster, but Hermione has spent a lifetime making up for her own shortcomings, and a cappuccino to the face is always a reliable distraction. Not reliable enough, it turns out. Malfoy's stun is wide off the mark, but while it misses her, it shatters the window of a passing car, causing the driver to lose control and veer onto the sidewalk. A freezing spell stops the vehicle from crashing into the crowd of pedestrians, but Hermione doesn't have time even to be surprised before she has to dive out of the way of Malfoy's disarming spell. Muggles are yelling and running and panicking all around them. So much for covert.

The waiter kneels by the door, motioning at people to duck in for cover. A little girl huddles under a nearby table, eyes tightly closed and arms pulled over her head. Someone — her mum, her aunt — is crouching next to the waiter, sobbing and trying to coax the girl to run to her as spells whizz through the air above their heads.

From the corner of her eye, Hermione sees the dark shapes of Apparating PHOENIX operatives. Malfoy sees them too, and the next spell he casts isn't a stun. It's very much not a stun. The flash of green that blasts a chunk of wall right above the café's door isn't his, though, and it's all Hermione can do not to stun Macmillan for sheer idiocy. He does it again, missing Malfoy by a mile, and Hermione does stun him then, because there's enough chaos down on the street without pretentious, conceited prats with something to prove making it worse.

"Granger…" Neville says her name like a sigh.

"Oops?"

"Take Malfoy down before the Ministry shows up."

It's easier said than done. Hermione's aim is the stuff of legends. With her bow and a high enough vantage point, she could hit a Knut at a distance of 360 yards. She's good. She's really good. But she can't do in close range the things she can do at a distance. Malfoy deflects and parries her spells too quickly for any to land and, unlike Macmillan, she's not about to start casting Unforgivables in a place crawling with Muggles.

He's running out of steam, though, forced to back away against the building by the unrelenting attacks of five agents, including Hermione. He solves that little problem by sending a burst of Fiendfyre hurling towards them. Hermione rolls out of the way, morphing into her Animagus form. If they keep this up, someone is going to get killed, and her money is on the Muggles. Parkinson is going to murder her either way, so in for a penny…

Malfoy's eyes widen in surprise when she turns back right in front of him. Somewhere behind her, Hannah Abbott yells a warning, and in the split second before Hermione flicks her wand, she can feel the heat of the incoming spell on her back. But by the time it reaches her, it hits nothing but wall.

The moment they Apparate in the deserted meadow, Hermione _flippendoes_ Malfoy halfway across the clearing. He lands heavily, but rolls to his feet, his disarming spell quickly followed by a stun, by a full body-bind, by a knockback jinx. The barrage of spells he hurls at her are the frustrated anger of a child lashing out, something that becomes increasingly clear with every spell absorbed by her shields. Hermione could probably duck out of the way of an Unforgivable, but she couldn't block it if it came to it. And yet he's still casting mostly stuns.

"How about we talk about this like civilised people?" she yells over the general commotion.

"How about we don't?"

He casts a tremor jinx at the ground under her feet, so she spells a flock of canaries aimed at his head. If he can be spiteful, so can she. The canaries must hit a nerve because next thing she knows, there's a tree branch flying at her head, and that's just plain rude.

"Careful, Malfoy. I'm going to start thinking you don't like me."

"You had one fucking job, Granger."

Yeah. That's what she thought. But her job is to follow mission parameters, not to humour the death wishes of Death Eaters who've suddenly grown a conscience.

She aims the Sectumsempra high, telegraphing the move just enough for him to spot it, but not enough to look intentional. He catches on to what she means to do too late to do anything about it. By the time he brings his wand down to block her second spell, thick, long ropes are looping themselves around his legs and up his torso, causing him to lose his balance and fall heavily to the ground. Malfoy clings desperately to his wand, but he can no longer move his arms enough to evade her disarming spell. By the time she walks up to him, all he can do is struggle uselessly against the binds, which coil tighter and tighter around him the more he fights their hold.

"That's the definition of a pointless exercise," she says, looking down at him. "You're not getting out of those."

"The moment I get my wand back, I'm going to rip your heart out."

"Are you now?"

There's no way for him to get out of the spell — not without a wand or a helping hand or a knife — but he still tries, his movements frenzied and frantic. He was once a member of Voldemort's inner circle, one of his trusted lackeys, and she's caught him with a little misdirection and a piece of string. Mudbloods 1, Death Eaters 0. The irony of that must not be lost on Malfoy, who starts to laugh like a man gone mental.

* * *

Draco's laughter is a broken, brittle thing, bordering on hysterical. The binds coil tighter and around him — around his legs, around his arms, over his chest — and Draco can't move and he can't breathe and he can't stop laughing. The only son of one of the oldest, wealthiest, most powerful wizarding families in Britain, caught by a nobody. Worse than a nobody: an illiterate Mudblood upstart with no breeding, no schooling and no skills beyond what she can do with that Muggle contraption of hers. What Draco wouldn't give to be in the room when someone breaks the news to his father.

"Are you done?" the upstart in question asks, and Draco is. He's done.

"Go on, Granger." His chest can't expand enough for him to draw a full breath, but there's something comforting and grounding about the pressure of the ropes. "There's no one around us for miles. No one to hear me scream. Do your worst."

"If you want someone to humour your punishment kink, Malfoy, there are places for that."

He rolls his eyes, looking away. The secret passages under Malfoy Manor hold a cornucopia of poisons: poisons designed to make a man fall into a sleep from which he'll never wake; poisons that slowly eat away at a man's soul; poisons to make a man die screaming. But Draco — a pure-blood, a Malfoy, the son of one of the Sacred Twenty-eight — he'd thought such a death beneath his dignity. Too pedestrian. Too cowardly. He'd wanted to die with a wand in his hand.

More fool he.

Calloused fingers touch his jaw and he looks up at PHOENIX's pet assassin.

"You could've run. When I brought us past the wards. You could've Disapparated."

"Run? From you?" It's supposed to sound like a sneer, but he doesn't have enough energy left even to be unpleasant. All he wanted was a quick, clean death, and she chose not to give it to him. Draco is too exhausted even to hate her for it. And then she pulls her hand away and he can't help hating her a little.

"It's Azkaban for you. The Ministry might not have the backbone to go after you lot, but it'll happily look the other way when we hand you over to the Dementors."

"You think you can scare me?" he asks with a laugh that hurts on the way out. "After the things I've seen? The things I've done?" Broken bodies and broken souls. His own is in tatters.

"I'm not trying to scare you. I'm giving you a choice." And trying to scare him into making the right one. She'd fit right in with his sort. "If you'd rather spend the rest of your days rotting in Azkaban, I'm happy to indulge you."

"And if I don't?" Draco doubts he'd notice a Dementor if one were standing right next to him, but even a man who wants to drown will instinctively kick for the surface. And besides, if Azkaban is the stick, he wants to know what the carrot is.

"Join us. PHOENIX could use you."

Of course they could. He's not even surprised. Draco is a very useful monster.

The surrounding countryside is like something out of a postcard: green meadows covered in flowers, a cow grazing by a stream, thatched roofs in the distance. It's perfect, in its own way, a perfection marred only by the two of them. He and Granger could paint the whole field red with the blood they've spilt between them.

"You think I'd exchange one puppet master for another? Why in Merlin's name would I?"

"To make amends."

Laughter rises like bile in his throat and all the fog around his mind is gone, leaving only white-hot fury.

"You stupid, arrogant bitch. There aren't enough lifetimes for me to make amends for the things I've done. You have no idea—"

"You think I don't? I've read the files, Malfoy. I've seen the footage. I've personally seen the aftermath of your little raiding parties. I _know_."

"Then stop being daft." The ropes tighten impossibly against his sudden movement, but he carries on speaking despite barely being able to take a breath. Breathing is a luxury he can do without. "You don't have the authority to make that offer. And if you did, it would still be a stupid one. What makes you think I won't just kill you the minute you turn your back?"

She stares at him for one long moment, this woman who's made herself a target by virtue of being who she is where Death Eaters can see her. He's hated her for so long — hated people like her for so long — that he's not even sure when it became a reflex. Now he hates himself too, and perhaps it's only fitting.

He tenses his muscles just to feel the ropes tighten further, needing the pressure, needing the clarity that comes with it, but the binds go slack after a second before falling away entirely.

"I guess I don't know you won't just kill me," Granger says, rising to her feet. "But I'm willing to find out."

He doesn't move a muscle but simply stares incredulously at the wand she's holding out to him — 10", hawthorn, unicorn hair core. He's had it since he was eleven and, just now, he'd rather cut off his own arm than reach for it.

"There's a fine, fine line between bravery and stupidity, Granger." And a finer one between making smart choices and making cowardly ones. He should know.

"So people keep telling me. Now are you going to stay down there moping or are you going to take this?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco deliberately sets up a situation in which he expects to be killed by PHOENIX forces. It does not come to pass.


	2. PHOENIX

**Three months later**

Draco does not bang the door shut behind him, but it says something about the frayed state of his nerves that he very nearly does. He grew up in the Dark Lord's shadow, surrounded by men like Anton Dolohov and Walden Macnair, by women like his aunt Bellatrix. He did not survive long enough to defect by not having a firm grip on every last one of his reactions. The single most important lesson his father ever taught him is that tells are for people who want to get themselves killed. Draco knows better. He's learned better. He's practised better until it became second nature because the cost of failure was a slow, painful death. But there's something about sitting in Luna Lovegood's lab for a couple of hours every week while she rifles through his brain that just makes him want to set things on fire and not care who sees him.

Ignoring the none-too-subtle glances of the PHOENIX agents around him, he starts down the corridor, schooling his features into an impassive mask through habit and muscle memory and sheer force of will.

Mandatory Legilimency sessions with Lovegood twice a week are one of PHOENIX's conditions for his continued employment. It's a reasonable precaution. Take part in enough slaughters and most prospective employers will, at the very least, wonder whether you mean to murder them in their sleep. Draco doesn't mind it in principle and it's beyond him why he minds it at all. The Dark Lord was a skilled Legilimens, a far stronger one than Lovegood, and his endless paranoia makes PHOENIX look downright trusting. At least Lovegood is careful about what she's doing. Her touch is a gentle, careful thing, like a feather touching skin. The Dark Lord's touch is like a storm making landfall, like having one's mind cracked open and picked apart with tweezers.

Draco minded it less, though, tweezers and all. What's more, he was grateful for it — _is_ grateful for it. He's grateful for all the horrible, twisted things he's learned at Lord Voldemort's feet, grateful for all the horrible, twisted things he's learned as Lord Voldemort's weapon. They've made him a worse man but a better wizard. Someone who can keep secrets from He Who Must Not Be Named can keep them from Luna Lovegood, can keep them from anyone who comes looking.

And yet he can't shake the low buzz under his skin, the creeping feeling of wrongness that lingers at the end of his sessions with Lovegood. The trick to deceiving a Legilimens is to give away just enough to seem cooperative and to withhold just enough to seem human. No mind is an open book. The brain folds unto itself instinctively, trying to protect its secrets, and the harder it tries, the more those secrets slip through like sand through a clenched fist. The trick is to bury the important secrets under all the others and hope they're buried deep enough. Draco has plenty of practice making sure they're buried deep enough, and with Lovegood he doesn't even have to try that hard. Skilled though she is, she has the attention span of a magpie surrounded by shiny things, and there's plenty of horrors inside his mind to distract her.

Luna is never scared (not of him, not even of the things he's done), and she doesn't outwardly flinch from what she finds when she goes looking, but the connection between them goes both ways and Draco can feel her distress through the bond, can feel the deep, aching sadness that grows until it colours every one of her thoughts, that dims everything else about her. It shouldn't matter — in the grand scheme of things it _doesn't_ matter, not given everything else he's done. But he can't escape the feeling that this is one more thing that's his fault.

"Stop brooding, Malfoy."

There was a time when someone's unexpected appearance at his side would have resulted in that person having their head bashed into a wall, but Draco is no longer that young nor that green, and he's perfectly aware that uncontrollable bursts of violence are tells too.

"Get lost, Granger," he says without stopping, without speeding up, without betraying the least interest in the woman who's fallen into step beside him.

"If you were nicer to people, they might like you a little better."

"If I cared about people's opinion, I might be."

He makes to turn towards the living quarters, but she tugs on his sleeve.

"This way," she says. "We're going out."

"Are we?" He's not entirely sure when he became Granger's pet project, but if she's convinced she can reform him, he won't disabuse her of the notion. Pulling other people's strings is hard work. It's nice when the puppets do the heavy lifting for him. Not that he currently needs to pull anyone's strings, of course, but one ought to be prepared for all eventualities. "I'm not cleared to leave HQ," he says, following her through the maze of corridors that criss-cross PHOENIX's underground headquarters.

"Rules are made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise witches."

Draco snorts. "Indeed. Except that I have yet to see you come across a rule you don't like."

"You think the way I recruited you was by the book?"

"The exception that confirms the rule."

She rolls her eyes with a chagrined smile that pretty much concedes the point even before she says, "Longbottom cleared you."

"You're a true rebel, Granger."

"Bite me, Malfoy."

Draco hasn't been outside PHOENIX HQ since they caught him. The secret headquarters of the Paranormal Hazard Office for Extra-Human and Non-Human Intelligence Extraction are located in the heart of London, under the decaying, decrepit husk of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. It's a state-of-the-art facility — vast, comfortable, modern, the perfect brain-child of Muggle technology and wizard whimsy — and it's not until Draco is standing out on the street under the open sky that he realises how much it had begun to feel like a coffin.

He and Granger don't linger outside. Secret headquarters don't stay secret by allowing assets to stand on their doorstep, drawing attention to it. Particularly when said assets are well-known public figures. Not that he feels particularly well-known at the moment. None of the wizarding newspapers have whispered a word about the sudden disappearance of Draco Malfoy from the public eye. Draco wonders if that's PHOENIX's handiwork or his father's.

"Where exactly are we going?"

"You'll see."

Their mysterious destination turns out to be no more than an ordinary office building in a busy part of town. It's a modern-looking thing, all of it sleek lines and shiny surfaces, and if there's anything in the least magical about it, it's certainly not in evidence. Some of the Muggles marching in and out of the building or hurrying by on the street cast the both of them a sideways glance, but most ignore their sudden appearance. Once upon a time, the public Apparition of two people clad in robes would have caused a commotion; once upon a time it might even have caused a panic. Nowadays it's commonplace.

Granger leads him across the lobby and they ride the lift up to the seventh floor. When the doors open, Draco stares for a second before giving Granger an incredulous look.

"What in Merlin's name…?"

"It's a gym. A gym is a—"

"Thank you," he cuts in. "I know what a gym is. Why are we here?"

"I thought you'd appreciate a field trip."

"To a Muggle gym?"

"We need to work on your hand-to-hand combat skills."

"_We_ do not have to do anything of the sort. If you want to waste your time learning Muggle tricks, knock yourself out. I'm leaving."

Draco is the descendant of an old family, a family that goes back hundreds of years. His ancestors came to Britain with William the Conqueror, and no Malfoy has knowingly associated with any other Muggle since. Certainly no Malfoy has ever stepped foot in a Muggle gym, and Draco doesn't plan to be the first.

Five minutes later he's facing Granger in a spacious room half covered in blue mats. Because apparently he's now the sort of person who bends to the whims of bossy Muggle-borns who think they know better. How the mighty fall. Loud music drifts in through the open doors from other parts of the facilities, and half the space is taken up by a Yoga class. Once upon a time Draco might not have known what Yoga is, but he's now well-versed in Muggle fads. He can practically hear his forefathers turning in their graves.

"Is there a reason why we couldn't have done this at HQ?" He widens his stance, the mat cool under his bare feet.

"Wouldn't want to embarrass you by kicking your ass in front of people who know who you are."

"Overconfidence will get you killed, Granger."

"Hasn't yet."

Her gaze shifts to a spot behind his shoulder, her eyes widening in surprise, and Draco instinctively glances back. He knows it for the mistake it is a split second before she lunges at him.

* * *

The impact with the hard floor knocks all the air out of Hermione, but she immediately rolls to her feet with all the ease of one who has plenty of practice being thrown around. Malfoy is not half bad, for a spoilt, uppity pure-blood prat who thinks any form of combat not involving a wand is beneath him. She doubts he's ever so much as thrown a punch before, but he's strong and he's quick and he's a fast learner. His balance could use work and his style is too defensive, but he has good spatial awareness and he never falls for the same trick twice. She wishes he would. She'll have plenty of bruises to show for today's work.

"Stop holding back," he says, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

Hermione grins. "Who says I am?"

"Aren't you?"

She is. So is he, come to that. They can't very well kill each other in front of a bunch of Muggles, not the least because the paperwork would be a nightmare. But there's something enticing about letting go.

"Fine," she says, gathering up the strands of hair that have come loose and tying up her hair more securely. "No eye-gouging."

He smirks and pulls his sweatshirt over his head, throwing it out of the way. The white t-shirt he's wearing underneath clings to his chest and the large black mark on the underside of his left arm stands out in stark contrast with his fair skin. Hermione wonders if he finally took off the sweatshirt because he's now too hot and worked up to feel self-conscious about it or because he hopes the Dark Mark will throw her off. Both, like as not. She doubts Malfoy has ever come across an advantage he did not choose to exploit.

She stops pulling her punches; he stops pulling his too. He's stronger than she is, but Hermione has plenty of experience making up for her size by being fast and smart and by playing dirty when she has to. Malfoy howls when she bites down hard on his arm, but doesn't let go immediately. She can taste blood before he throws her against the floor-to-ceiling window that runs along the entire side of the room. The glass groans but doesn't break and Hermione can just about make out the drop from the corner of her eye. She doesn't stay still long enough for Malfoy to pin her there.

It's like a dance, fast and graceful and exhilarating, even the parts that drag alarmed yelps out of the nearby Muggles, who've stopped trying to hold whatever complicated pose their torture hobby requires and are now staring wide-eyed at the two of them.

Malfoy momentarily gains the upper-hand by pushing her head first into a wall. The impact reverberates across her skull and causes the whole world to go topsy-turvy long enough for him to twist her right arm behind her back in an attempt to immobilise her. But if the odd blow to the head were enough to slow Hermione down, she'd have got herself killed or captured well before today. Ignoring the sharp pain to her shoulder, she jams one foot between herself and the wall, and uses the leverage to push herself off the wall and Malfoy off her.

Had Hermione known how much fun this would be, she'd have started blowing off her mandatory counselling sessions long before today. Therapy is overrated, anyway, something she's pointed out to Neville again and again only for him to stare at her with that very specific look of his that basically boils down to, _"_P_lease leave my office and go do whatever it is you're trying to talk your way out of doing"_. She loathes that look. She loathes it almost as much as she loathes therapy.

Sometimes the way to work through your frustrations is to take them out on someone else. A willing someone else, of course. She's not a monster. Her therapist wouldn't approve, but then Patil approves of very little. Jump off a roof one time too many in the line of duty and suddenly you're engaging in "self-destructive behaviour" and taking "careless risks with your own safety," and does Hermione think maybe that's a sign of unresolved issues that ought to be addressed? No, Hermione does not think that's a sign of unresolved issues that ought to be addressed. Hermione thinks she'd rather chew off her own arm than sit through another hour of Padma Patil over-analysing everything she does. She needs her arm, though, so this is the next best thing. She's not avoiding Patil, she's training new recruits and providing moral support to a troubled colleague. A colleague who's frankly far more in need of therapy than she is, and she's yet to see anyone suggest to Draco Malfoy that maybe he should sit down on a sofa for an hour every week and talk about his feelings.

The sudden, loud arrival of two overly muscled Muggles intent on putting a stop to the alarming display of violence disrupting Yoga class proves enough of a distraction that one moment Hermione is evading Malfoy's poor attempt at a jab, and the next he has swept her legs from under her and she's laying flat on her back, his weight on her chest, his left hand pinning down her right arm and his left hand at her throat. Hermione's first reaction is irritation — at him, at herself, at the inconveniently timed Muggles. Her second reaction is to burst out laughing, a genuine, hearty laugh that's at least eighty per cent adrenaline. At least sixty per cent adrenaline.

"You were lucky," she says, still smiling, and Malfoy smiles back at her, an unexpectedly unguarded smile, miles away from his usual smirk.

"You were distracted."

Letting go, he shifts his weight and rises to his feet, holding out a hand to Hermione. Before she can take it, however, a petite woman walks up to them.

"Right," she says briskly. The two burly men stand at some distance behind her, where it's reasonably safe and the mean wizards can't get them. "Whatever that was, you can't do it here. You can't wear shoes on the mats—"

"We weren't—"

"—and you can't bleed all over them either. No blood on the mats. Or the walls. Or the window, come to that. Shouldn't need mentioning."


	3. Up on the Roof

"You're going to fall and break your neck." Draco takes a sip of the Firewhisky and watches as Hermione balances on top of the narrow wall that encircles the rooftop.

"Nonsense." Her arms flail as she jumps and turns to face the other way, but she keeps her balance and starts walking in the opposite direction, one foot in front of the other, like an acrobat walking a tightrope. "Perfectly safe, see?"

"You're drunk."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Would a drunk person do this?" With a completely unnecessary flourish, she bends down to grasp the edges of the wall and slowly lifts her legs over her body until she's holding herself upside down next to a drop of some five hundred feet.

"I can say with some certainty that a drunk person would."

"And this?" Shifting her weight, she lifts her right hand off the wall until she's balancing her full body weight on her non-dominant arm on the edge of a roof. The London skyline is shining and flickering all around them — street lights and house lamps and the illuminated dome of St Paul's in the distance — and Draco Malfoy is sitting on a rooftop getting drunk with a lunatic who thinks gravity only applies to other people. How his life has changed.

"Half the Death Eaters in Britain have tried to kill you at one point or other. To think they'd only have had to wait until you got yourself killed in some stupid stunt."

"I beg your pardon?" Her voice is slightly strained from the effort, her left arm beginning to shake under her weight. "The stunt that gets me killed will be of the highest calibre, I'll have you—" Her arm collapses under her and Granger tries to catch herself with the other one, but her body is angled the wrong way and her fingers only skim the edge before she's falling, her strangled shout more surprised than panicked.

Draco's reaction is three quarters instinct, one quarter foresight. He's been half expecting her to fall for the past ten minutes. The levitation spell is off the split second before her arm folds under her, and Hermione only disappears from sight for a couple of seconds before she floats up again, caught by Draco's spell. The unconcerned grin on her face speaks volumes about how much of an accident that was.

"I should have let you fall," he says dryly, levitating her towards him.

"Given you're one of the Death Eaters who's tried to kill me at one point or another," she says with an unrepentant smile, "I'm a little surprised you didn't."

"I'd rather not have to explain to McGonagall that I didn't push you off a roof."

"It would've taken less explaining than you think." Granger spreads her arms and does a somersault mid-air, pushing at nothing with her feet to right herself up again. "Are you going to let me down?"

"Are you going to stop behaving like a Gryffindor high on sugar?"

"If I'd gone to Hogwarts, I'd have been in Ravenclaw."

"Not bloody likely." The moment he sets her down, she reaches across him for the Firewhisky but he holds it out of her reach. "Mine."

"They didn't teach you to share at that posh school of yours?"

"Not with the likes of you, they didn't."

"That I can well believe." She takes the offered bottle with a smile.

Ravenclaw indeed. Draco can, if he tries, imagine a world in which Granger might have gone to Hogwarts, but he can't imagine a world in which she'd have been anything but a Gryffindor. Stubborn, reckless, irritating lot. She'd have fit right in.

Draco attended Hogwarts at the height of the Dark Lord's power; there were no Muggle-borns at the school the whole time he was there. Even nowadays, with He Who Must Not Be Named gone underground and his forces scattered, there are still fewer Muggle-borns than there might have been. The lucky ones never received their letters. The unlucky ones did not survive the war, did not survive men like Draco.

"Did you know there's a spot on the grounds," Granger says, "where if you stand at the exact time of the winter solstice, you will turn into one of the castle's portraits?"

"There is not. That's absurd."

"It's true."

"How would you know?"

"I read it in _Hogwarts: A History_."

"What in Merlin's name were you doing reading _Hogwarts: A History_?"

Hermione shrugs, passing him the bottle. "What? I can't like books?"

"Not if you're going to believe every far-fetched thing you read in them."

She snorts and shifts sideways, moving his arm out of the way to lie down with her head on his lap, as if he were someone other than a man who did try to kill her on many an occasion. A man who almost succeeded more than once.

"It's not far-fetched," she says, not a care in the world. It's like that headstand all over again, like daring gravity to do what gravity does. Draco could wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze, and maybe she could get out of it and maybe she couldn't, but given their relative positions he'd have the advantage. Whether she's testing him or toying with him or really is that much of a fool, it's a dangerous game to play. "It's a magical castle," she adds, oblivious to the danger or unconcerned by it. Knowing her, probably the latter. "I doubt people turning into portraits is the weirdest thing that's ever happened there."

"I dare say it's not, but it still doesn't make that story true." He tilts her face up so she's looking up at him and runs his thumb under the darkening bruise on her cheek. The two of them no longer look as bad as they did right after their bout earlier — people who lead the sort of lives they do know their way around basic healing spells — but there are still bound to be some awkward questions when they make it back to HQ.

"Next you'll tell me there's no Chamber of Secrets, either," Granger says, untroubled by bruises or questions, or the people who might ask them.

"That's a myth. People have looked for it for centuries." Every year, young bright-eyed Slytherins go looking. Draco did too, once upon a time, one more eleven-year-old young enough and silly enough to believe in fate and destiny and secret chambers filled with riches. "No one's ever found anything."

"Just because no one's ever found it doesn't mean it isn't there."

That's the sort of indisputable, pointless logic that leads new generations of Slytherins to go in search of the Chamber of Secrets year after year after year, but Draco isn't eleven years old anymore and he hasn't believed in fairy tales in a really long time.

A comfortable silence falls between them. Draco knows enough to be wary of comfortable silences — of comfortable anythings — but he's tired and sore and pleasantly drowsy from the Firewhisky, and Granger is a warm, pleasant weight half on top of him. The witch hums her approval when he buries his fingers in her hair, closing her eyes with a contented sigh. For someone who makes a living shooting people with a bow and arrow, she's not half bad at the sort of spy games at which he excels. This right here, it's like a cat on someone's lap: an implicit invitation to touch, the sort of instinctive gesture that requires more thought to counter than to enact, and why would anyone try? It's soothing, relaxing, lowers inhibitions, creates a sense of intimacy. She's manipulating him, and just this second he's happy to let her.

When she reaches for his left arm, tugging back his sleeve, he makes no move to stop her. To do so would be more revealing than to let her see what she knows perfectly well is there. It's hard to make out the details of the Dark Mark in the half light, but he doesn't need to see it to know every loop, every line, every bit of shading. The branding on his skin is inconsequential. The bloody thing is carved into his brain. "How old were you when you got it?" she asks.

"Sixteen." Young and foolish and so very proud.

She traces it with her finger, a soft touch just at the edge of it. "That's unusual, isn't it? For someone so young to get it?"

Unusual, unexpected. Unprecedented.

"The Dark Lord had a task for me. Something only I could accomplish."

"Dumbledore."

Dumbledore. Who could be kind and who could be charming and who was, in his own way, as ruthless and cold-blooded as He Who Must Not Be Named. Draco had liked that about him.

"Some think he was the greatest wizard who's ever lived," he says. "But great men bleed just like everyone else."

"They do." The Dark Mark burns when she touches it, a sharp, loud pain, but Draco does not pull his arm away, doesn't so much as flinch. "It's funny, really. People die all the time. Good people and bad people, they die suddenly or tragically or horribly, or all three. I should know. I've certainly seen it often enough." That she's caused it often enough goes unsaid. "No one lives forever, but I thought he might. I thought he would. He had this way of making you believe that everything was possible and that everything would be all right in the end because he would see to it."

"Sounds like the Dumbledore I knew." Arrogant and cryptic and so very sure nothing could ever touch him.

"You helped him end the war. Whatever else happened, you did that."

Draco doesn't stop the movement of his fingers on her hair, doesn't allow himself even the smallest reaction to her words. The smile on his lips is a carefully calculated thing: thin and humourless, just vulnerable enough to be endearing, just bitter enough to be believable.

"Oh yes," he says in a tone to match that smile. "That's just how people remember it. 'Draco Malfoy, the boy who helped bring down the Dark Lord.' Not 'Draco Malfoy, the boy who killed Albus Dumbledore.'"

For months Dumbledore had courted Draco like a lover might, with promises and reassurances and visions of a better world. When he'd finally asked Draco for a way into Hogwarts, Draco had been more than happy to comply. How could it have been otherwise? What Death Eater would have passed on the opportunity to present the Dark Lord with Albus Dumbledore's head on a silver platter?

Dumbledore had been the first one through the Vanishing Cabinet that night, and Bellatrix's men had allowed several more PHOENIX agents through before springing their trap. The skirmish that followed had been short and brutal. Dumbledore had focused on the older Death Eaters, duelling Bellatrix, Rabastan and Dolohov at the same time. When Draco's Avada Kedavra hit, he had time only to look surprised before falling to the ground.

The old man might have had an over-inflated sense of his own abilities, but he was no fool and he'd at least entertained the possibility that Draco might double-cross him. The party that came through the Vanishing Cabinet was nothing but a distraction, meant to keep the Death Eaters busy while Snape allowed the bulk of PHOENIX's forces to cross into the grounds from Hogsmeade.

By the end of the night, the war was over and the Dark Lord was gone. After a fashion, anyway. PHOENIX had sacrificed their Queen to win, but they _had_ won, and Draco had helped make it happen. In a way. If one were to ignore all the context and most of the particulars, at any rate.

"He thought he could save me," Draco says, and that's probably true. "For a while there, I thought he could too." And that is a complete fabrication. "And now he's dead and I'm the one who killed him."

"Do you ever regret it?"

"Every day."

Hermione raises a hand to his face, a gentle, comforting gesture for the boy who found himself caught in the crossfire between the two greatest wizards of their generation. And then her lips curve up into a sardonic smile.

"You're so full of it, Malfoy." He answers her smile with a smirk of his own, moving his hands out of the way when she sits up to look at him. "The hurt puppy look doesn't suit you."

It suits him very well, in fact, and has served him well on many an occasion. But it amuses him that she should see right through it.

"For Dumbledore," he says, the smirk firmly in place, "I was a means to an end. He might have wept for me, if it'd gone the other way, but not much and not for long. He'd have felt it justified." There were plenty of things that kept Draco up at night, but Albus Dumbledore wasn't one of them. "He did what he had to do to get what he wanted, and I did the same. We both knew what the price of failure was. Now, how about we stop dancing around each other and you tell me what this is really about."

The past three months, this morning, this moment right here.

"This from the man who wouldn't give someone a straight answer if they so much as asked his name."

"Be the bigger person."

She smiles, staring out at the city lights. Her hair is a mess of wild curls around her face, and Draco badly wants to sit her in front of him and braid it into submission. As impulses go, he's had worse ones.

"Neville is putting together a team," she says at last. "Classified. Need to know only. He wants you in it."

"But?"

"But concerns have been raised."

Ah.

"McGonagall doesn't trust me."

"Would you, in her place?"

No. No, he wouldn't. Minerva McGonagall is not as powerful a witch as Dumbledore was, nor as skilled with a wand, but she's a better leader for it, a smarter one, if only because — unlike the old man — she doesn't believe herself capable of bending the world to her will. And because she doesn't, she doesn't attempt it, but accepts reality as she finds it and works around the things she cannot change. Dumbledore looked at Draco and saw only possibilities: a way into Hogwarts, a way into the Dark Lord's inner circle, a way to end the war. McGonagall looks at Draco and sees a liability. A useful liability, no doubt, but a liability nonetheless.

"Longbottom wants me for this team of his and McGonagall thinks I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. And what exactly is your role in this?"

"I'm the Death Eater whisperer." Whatever that means. "I'm sent to find out whether you'll sell us all out the first chance you get."

"And will I?"

"Very likely. If you think we're going to lose, or if you find yourself cornered, or if they make it worth your while."

Not exactly the most flattering assessment of his character. It's spot on, of course, but it still stings in unexpected ways, and none the less for being true.

"And yet you'll convince Longbottom to take me," he says.

"Will I?"

"Most definitely."

"How do you figure?

"It's the only way to satisfy your desperate need to prove that an ex-carnie, Mudblood thief is as useful an asset as any of the agents with impeccable pedigrees and a Hogwarts education working for PHOENIX." Sometimes his aim is as good as hers. Sometimes it's better. "Ernie Macmillan might be a pure-blood, and Lavender Brown might have been top of her year at school, but only Hermione Granger is brave enough and smart enough to handle a dangerous, unpredictable Death Eater. Except that it doesn't make you brave, Granger, and it doesn't make you smart. It makes you reckless and a little pathetic."

Gravity did what gravity does, and Draco isn't sorry, except that a temper is not a luxury he can afford or should indulge.

Hermione stares at him for one long moment, too surprised to look anything but hurt. And then her expression closes and she looks away, her mask as good as any of his.

"Careful, Malfoy," she says with practised levity. "You lash out like that and I'm going to think I hurt your feelings."

She did. Maybe that makes him a little pathetic too.

Rather than reply, Draco brings the bottle up to his lips and knocks back the rest of the Firewhisky. He's had too much already — the right amount to drink out in the open, where they're sitting ducks, is none — but he's survived worse decisions, and he'll survive this one too.

"I trust you can find your way back to HQ," Granger says, rising to her feet. Before she can Disapparate, however, Draco grabs her hand. She stares down at him with haughty, icy civility, but does not pull her hand away. After a moment, she lets him manoeuvre her in front of him until she's sitting between his legs, her back to him. On the sloping roof, that puts her at the perfect height for him to reach up and start dividing her hair for braiding. It takes a minute for her shoulders to relax, another one for her to throw an arm over his raised knee.

"Some people just say sorry," she says.

"Sorry." And that might be the first time he's ever said it and meant it.


	4. Malfoy Manor

It's a wonder to Draco that McGonagall should have objected to his presence in Longbottom's mysterious secret team, considering who else is in it. Not happy with snatching PHOENIX's resident Death Eater, Longbottom went and got himself Wonder Boy Potter, whose defeat of the Dark Lord put a target on his back the size of an Erumpent on steroids. And it's not as if Draco doesn't have a price on his head. He does. Death Eaters don't like turncoats, and his aunt Bella likes blood-traitor nephews even less. But at least Draco understands the virtue of discretion. Potter couldn't do discreet if his life depended on it, which it does, and it will if their secret plot has any hope of remaining secret for any amount of time.

Of course, Potter's lack of suitability for anything other than grand entrances and rousing speeches is a minor inconvenience when compared to what else they have to contend with. Or, more to the point, who else. As if recruiting the wizarding world's Big Bright Hope wasn't bad enough — Potter isn't even a PHOENIX agent, he's a bloody Auror — Longbottom went and got the Weasley twins, because what volatile, dangerous situation doesn't benefit from adding a little chaos to the mix? It's like Longbottom is trying to win a prize for the world's worst choice of freelancers.

With the Weasleys comes Blaise Zabini, a less annoying but infinitely more surprising addition to the team. Like Draco, Zabini comes from an old pure-blood family and, like Draco, he was in Slytherin House when they were at school. The Zabinis were never among the Dark Lord's followers, but they are a well-regarded family in society circles: wealthy, influential and proud — proud especially, proud always. Draco has known Blaise to turn up his nose at the Lestranges for being 'new money', and now he's babysitting Weasleys. Will wonders never cease.

From PHOENIX there's Draco and there's Granger, who shoulders all the blame for his presence in this misguided gathering of far too many Gryffindors and one Slytherin who's clearly lost his bloody mind.

Two Slytherins who've clearly lost their bloody minds.

There's Longbottom too, of course, responsible for said gathering, and then there's Ron Weasley, who Draco can only assume was invited to fill some unspecified Weasley quota. That being the case, Draco only wishes Longbottom could have picked the Weaslette instead. At least she has talent and brains to recommend her. As far as he can ascertain, Ronald Weasley has nothing to recommend him besides a propensity to frown excessively in Draco's general direction.

Turns out that the team is the least of Draco's problems, because apparently the Dark Lord went and made himself some Horcruxes. Plural. As if one weren't barbaric enough. Of course he did.

There was a time when Draco would've thought it impossible, unthinkable, for who would deliberately cannibalise his own soul like that, whatever the reason, whatever the prize? But Draco has been in Lord Voldemort's presence, he's looked into Lord Voldemort's eyes, and if he claimed to be surprised, he'd be lying. The only surprising part is that Voldemort had a soul to begin with.

The Horcruxes are a problem. When Potter defeated He Who Must No Be Named during the Battle of Hogwarts — a seventeen-year-old taking down the greatest wizard who ever lived — Voldemort's supporters held on to the belief that it had been luck, a fluke, and that since the Dark Lord still lived, soon, very soon, he'd rise again, stronger than before.

Everyone else (and enough of his followers included) held on to the belief that though the Dark Lord still lived, he had been weakened to the point where he might as well be dead. The war was over and He Who Must Not Be Named would never — could never — rise again. And if he did, he'd die. They'd managed once, they could manage again. They could do it better. They could end it once and for all.

They can't end it once and for all. Not without destroying every last one of those Horcruxes first.

That's where Potter comes in, because apparently the Golden Boy got more out of his fight with He Who Must Not Be Named than that ridiculous lightening scar. Inadvertently or not, the Dark Lord dug his claws into the world of the living by turning Potter into yet another Horcrux. As if Wonder Boy Potter needed any more reasons to feel special.

Even Draco has to admit it's proved convenient, however. It created a connection between Potter and the Dark Lord; a connection that's become stronger over time. It's how they know about the Horcruxes. It's how they know where to find them.

It turns out that Fred and George's talents are not limited to blowing things up. The twins took the magical bond between Potter and the Dark Lord and used it to pinpoint the location of most of the Horcruxes: Gringotts, Hogwarts, a house just outside Little Hangleton, a cave in the Cornish coast, and Malfoy Manor.

Draco isn't even surprised. The Death Eaters have been using the house as a base of operations for years. Voldemort himself lived there at the height of his power.

Breaking into Gringotts and Hogwarts will take some doing, so they're starting with the rest. The twins will recover the Horcrux in Little Hangleton, Potter and the less useful Weasley will head for Cornwall, and Draco and Hermione will handle Malfoy Manor.

Home sweet home.

It's a new moon and there's barely any light as Draco and Hermione walk cross-country towards the edge of the Malfoy estate. The air is crisp and it smells of rain, but the clouds have cleared and stars dot the sky above. Their wands remain unlit, one less thing to give them away should anyone be watching. Not that Draco expects there to be. Even back when the Dark Lord held court in Lucius Malfoy's drawing room, there had been no sentries or lookouts. Part of it had been arrogance, of course, for what did wealthy, powerful pure-bloods have to fear from the rabble that made up the so-called Order of the Phoenix? But it hadn't just been arrogance. Malfoys have lived on this land for nine hundred years, and successive generations have added to the existing wards, expanding and strengthening the tapestry of spells keeping the world at bay. The wards that protect the house and grounds are old and powerful and have never been breached.

Draco knows it the moment they cross into his family's lands, though nothing marks the border between the Malfoy estate and the neighbouring fields. But he can feel the wards tingling against his skin and whispering in his ear. He can feel them deep in his bones. They whisper words of family, duty, love, pride, home.

Home.

Granger is a quiet shadow in front of him. She moves with grace, her footsteps silent though the ground is littered with leaves. The quiver on her back is full of arrows, the fletchings a small spot of colour in the muted landscape. He'd watched the day before as she carefully examined every single one of them, looking for flaws he couldn't see.

"Shield piercing," she'd explained, pointing at the arrows with yellow fletchings. "Lightening hex," she'd added, pointing at the blue ones. "Explosive." Orange. "Poisonous." Green.

Sounded about right.

Malfoy Manor looms at the end of the lane, large and dark and familiar.

They stay out of sight of the windows as they go around the back; the Disillusionment Charms can only hide so much. Draco touches his wand to the back door, carefully undoing the locking spell without tripping any alarms, while Hermione quietly picks the lock. She pauses on the last pin to give him time to finish dealing with the spell, and only then fully disengages the mechanism.

It's close on 3a.m. The kitchens are dark and deserted, and there's no one around as Draco leads the way up the stairs to the ground floor. He chooses his path with care, one foot in front of the other, avoiding the places where he knows the floorboards will creak. Hermione's fingers on his back are a soft, steady presence as they move through the house. The darkness is broken only by the faint, blueish light that comes through the open windows from stars too far away to be of much use.

Draco doesn't need light to find his way around. He was born in this house. He sneaked down this corridor as a child up past his bedtime, walked past these rooms as a boy looking for his mother, climbed these stairs as a young man who'd learned monsters were real and lived right here, under this roof.

They reach his father's study without seeing another living soul. Draco closes the door quietly behind them while Hermione mutters a string of spells under her breath: Muffliato, Proximity Alarm, Cover of Darkness. And then she turns on the lights. Draco flinches, blinking rapidly.

"Little warning," he hisses.

"Sorry."

They spread around the room and Draco reaches for the amulet designed by the Weasley Comedy Duo to identify the Horcrux. It's very pink and very sparkly, a garish, over-the-top monstrosity that's meant to light up in proximity to any of the Horcruxes.

"Practical and stylish," George had said with a mischievous look in Blaise's direction. Draco would bet his wand that the twins have chosen the look for no better reason than to offend Zabini's delicate patrician sensibilities.

It's the lack of movement behind him that makes him turn to look at Hermione. The witch stands unmoving in the middle of the room, her attention on the painting that hangs over the fireplace. The painting is one of several that adorn the study: there's a portrait of Abraxas Malfoy, Draco's grandfather, who'd had opinions on his son's closeness to 'half-bloods with delusions of grandeur;' one of Septimus Malfoy, who'd lived in the 1600s and been Minister for Magic; one of Adelaide Malfoy, who'd been Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. None of the people on the portraits can see the two of them. As far as they know, the study is still dark and deserted.

The painting Hermione is looking at is the largest in the room and has changed many times over the course of Draco's life. Once it had shown his parents, standing side by side, Draco only a few days old in his mother's arms. Later it had shown Lucius Malfoy smiling down at his wife, who sat on a high-back chair with a very smiley, very blond toddler on her lap. It changed again and again, years and years of slight differences or larger ones. Draco on a rocking horse, Draco with a toy broom, Draco in his Slytherin robes. His parents smiling at him or at each other, happy and carefree and proud.

Narcissa still sits on that chair today, though her real-life counterpart has been dead for many years. Draco is no longer a child in the painting, but a young man, handsome and elegant and so very much like his father. The two of them flank Narcissa's chair, Lucius's hand on her shoulder. The portrait won't change again, it's been frozen in time. The family it shows no longer exists. Narcissa is dead and, when faced with a choice between his family and himself, Draco chose himself. None of the people on these walls would understand or approve, not even his mother, who'd loved him more than anything else in the world, not even Abraxas, who'd warned his son repeatedly that ambition without common sense was folly, and that nothing good would come of following a nobody who fancied himself a lord.

"We need to hurry," Draco says, turning away. He's made his choice. He'll live with it like he's had to live with all the others.

* * *

There's nothing in the study or the library or anywhere they've looked. The house goes on for miles, because the rich never had to learn moderation, and Hermione knows that the longer it takes for them to find the Horcrux, the higher the chance they'll get caught. And that's not so very terrible, she can work with that, but she'd rather have the Horcrux by then. Controlled chaos can be a good thing, a useful thing, but the controlled part is key.

And she finds it unnerving, this large house with its silent portraits, eyes following them everywhere they go. The portraits can't see them — _probably_ can't see them — not with the Disillusionment and Cover of Darkness charms, but she can't shake the feeling that they know they're there, that they know Draco is there. It's easy to see the family resemblance between him and the faces on the walls: the same blond hair, the same aquiline nose, the same grey eyes.

A time there had been — during her less law-abiding days — when Hermione would have looked at a house like this and seen only the price tags. She would have focused on the things small enough to carry, and valuable enough to turn a profit. She looks at it now, at this house filled with so much wealth and privilege, where so many terrible things have happened, and she sees other things too. There are entire generations up on these walls, hundreds of years of Malfoys watching them from gilded frames. She looks at them and she sees parents and their children; she sees aunts and uncles and cousins, hundreds of years of family meals and school letters and Christmas mornings. She sees how those things can be turned into chains, into tangled knots of duty and love and expectations. Hermione does not doubt that the boy in the painting in the study loved his parents. She does not doubt that his parents loved him too. And while it doesn't excuse any of the horrible, terrible things Draco did, while it doesn't negate his responsibility for any of the horrible, terrible choices he made, she can't help but wonder whether if she'd had the things he did — loving parents, a family, a home — whether she might not have done some horrible, terrible things to keep them too.

She was never in a position to find out and, just now, she's almost glad. Almost.

She tugs on Draco's sleeve and gestures to herself and to the corridor to the left, and to him and to the corridor to the right. There's just enough light for her to see him nodding in agreement. It's doubtful that he likes it, but he knows as well as she does that they're taking too long.

Turning left, she moves slowly and quietly. Draco knows the house in a way she doesn't, but she's studied the schematics and she's a very accomplished burglar. She knows where she's going and how to get there without giving herself away.

Bellatrix Lestrange's room is on the second floor, in the east wing, and when Hermione turns the doorknob, the door opens easily. She slips in quietly, closing it behind her. The curtains are pulled back enough that she can make out the body on the bed, can see the rhythmic rise and fall of Bellatrix's chest. The twins' pendant remains unlit, and it's just as well. Hermione did not think to find the Horcrux here. The primary mission parameters are to get the Horcrux — none of this will matter if they don't — but Hermione has a secondary mission.

She pads across the room towards the bed, shifting her weight carefully, praying that the floorboards won't creak. Bellatrix is lying on her back and her hair is fanned out under her, a mass of dark curls against the white sheets. Her expression is soft in sleep in a way it never is when she's awake, and she almost looks peaceful. A very peaceful psychotic bitch. Leaning over the sleeping woman, Hermione cuts a lock of hair with her wand and drops it into a small envelope that she quickly tucks away in her pouch.

Now's the time to leave. Hermione has what she came for, and she still has to find the blasted Horcrux. Lingering is a bad idea. Lingering is the sort of amateurish bad idea that gets thieves caught and agents killed, and Hermione is no amateur. But it's hard to walk away when Bellatrix Lestrange is right here, in front of her, unarmed and defenceless. Hermione could slit her throat without her ever making a sound, could kill her instantly with a flick of her wand. But that's not the plan. That's not the plan and Hermione is a professional. A professional who can look at the big picture and not let her feelings get the better of her. Honest. Even if all she sees when she looks at Bellatrix is the corpses of too many good agents. Even if all she sees is the broken bodies of too many people like herself, Muggle-borns who'd thought magic was something wondrous until Bellatrix Lestrange taught them something different.

Her fingers tighten around her wand and Hermione takes a step back. Big picture. She has her orders.

She reaches for Bellatrix's wand on the nightstand but, at that very moment, a high-pitched shriek pierces the air.

"INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS IN THE MANOR!"

Bellatrix's eyes fly open and before Hermione can so much as lift her wand, she's thrown across the room. The impact with the wall knocks all the air out of her and she struggles to hold on to her wand but Bellatrix gives her no time to so much as catch her breath. One moment she's a pile on the ground, the next invisible hands lift her up, pinning her against the wall.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?" Bellatrix pads barefoot across the room. Outside there are people shouting and running, and there's light under the door, but in the bedroom the only light comes from Bellatrix's wand. "Lost little bird come to disturb my sleep. Now, is that a nice thing to do, pet?"

"Let me go and I'll show you nice, you crazy bitch." The wordless Crucio hits Hermione without warning and she screams, dropping her wand as her whole body spasms.

"Tut tut," Bellatrix says, edging closer. "Language, love. We shan't be friends if you don't behave. And I so very dearly wish us to be. Tell me, what's a sneaky little Mudblood doing in my bedroom, hmm?"

Cold fingers trail the side of Hermione's face and she forces herself to relax, forces herself to stop fighting the spell. Bellatrix's grip on her slackens slightly. Not enough for Hermione to break free, but enough for her to move a little if she doesn't try too hard.

"Just dropped by to say hi," she says, her heart hammering in her chest. "You know, it being the civil thing to do."

Fingers sharpen into claws as Bellatrix digs her nails into Hermione's face. "Feisty. I like that. We're going to have so much fun, sweet girl."

Slowly, slowly, Hermione turns her wrist.

"Let me down and I'll show you how much fun I can be."

Bellatrix's smile is terrible to behold, bright and delighted and utterly mad.

"The things I'll do to you, pet."

The moment Hermione's ring finger finds the trigger, a dart shoots from the mechanism under her sleeve. The angle is wrong, the trajectory too wide, but the dart still grazes the side of Bellatrix's neck in passing. The witch's eyes go wide in surprise and she instinctively lifts a hand to her neck. And then her eyes roll back and she falls to the ground.

The moment she loses consciousness the spell breaks and Hermione catches herself, planting her feet firmly on the ground to keep from falling. Taking a deep breath, she curls her hands into fists to stop them from shaking. If she thinks too hard about it, she'll give herself a panic attack, and she really doesn't have that sort of time.

After collecting Bellatrix's wand, she looks around for the dart and puts it back in place, reseting the mechanism. It's a different poison from the one used on her arrows. It won't kill Bellatrix and more's the pity.

Still. Big picture.

She runs to the window, unlocking it and pushing it open. It's a fourteen feet drop, give or take, which is too high for her to simply jump down and too low for her to have time to turn and shoot a grappling hook before going splat on the ground. Probably too low. Maybe. It would be tight. A levitation spell would help keep her airborne long enough, but she can't juggle a wand and a bow and arrow at the same time. Or could she?

Well. She's faced worse odds.

Reaching for her bow, she swings one leg out the window and looks out. At least it's not raining.

Somewhere in the manor, a large explosion is followed by shouted curses, is followed by the loud clanging of metal against stone. Hermione hesitates, half inside the bedroom, half outside. She can make a clean escape. The only Death Eater who knows she's there is Bellatrix, and she's out for another hour at least. Either Malfoy will make it out or he won't, but her getting herself caught with him won't help anyone, not even him. And while she doesn't have the Horcrux, she has Bellatrix's wand and hair, and that's something. The mission isn't a total loss.

The mission doesn't have to be a total loss.

Another explosion. Biting back a curse, Hermione pulls herself back into the bedroom. They're both going to get themselves killed. They're both going to get themselves killed, the Horcruxes won't get destroyed, Voldemort will rise again and the wizarding world will be fucked. Again.

Of all the stupid, dumb decisions.

Listening at the door, Hermione cracks it open and peers outside. The corridor is deserted. She puts her bow away and draws her wand before stepping out. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Following the sounds of the fight, Hermione carefully makes her way through the maze of corridors and hallways, trying to stay out of sight of portraits. It's harder than it was before all hell broke loose. Disillusionment Charms aren't invisibility spells.

She finds Draco by the front door, cornered by five Death Eaters and far too many house-elves. The ground is littered with debris — wood splinters, broken glass, shards of china. There's a fallen cabinet and a fallen body, and though Hermione can't see a fire, she can smell it, can see the wavering light it casts on the walls.

Draco parries and shields and casts spells faster than anyone Hermione has ever seen, but he's losing ground and he's losing steam. There are too many of them and just one of him, and he's obviously injured, clearly favouring his left side.

Putting her wand away, Hermione unhooks her bow. It's not the best weapon to use in close quarters, but she's high up on the staircase and they don't know she's there. That won't last, of course, but she can do plenty of damage before they're onto her.

She pulls out two regular arrows and takes aim, breathing in and out, tracking the movement of her targets, feeling the connection between herself and the arrow and them. In, out, release. An arrow pierces a woman's neck from behind, the other hits a man in the back, straight through the heart. How's that for a Muggle trick? The third arrow is out a split second before the first two hit, and Hermione yells "Blue," over the commotion.

Draco casts a shield just in time to prevent being hit by the arrow's Lightening Spell, but everyone else gets knocked to the ground. One house-elf still lunges for Draco when he runs past, but the wizard _flippendoes_ him away without stopping. The house-elves are the problem. The three remaining Death Eaters — Lucius Malfoy and the Carrow siblings — are slower to recover, but the house-elves are back on their feet in seconds, Disapparating and Apparating on the stairs and on the landing. Their magic feeds off the manor's and there are far too many of them.

"You should have run," Malfoy says, turning so his back is to hers. They're surrounded.

"Yeah, you don't say." She'd swapped the bow for her wand as soon as she cast the third arrow. "We need a way out."

The house-elves lunge at them at the same time and Hermione can feel the shock wave Draco casts to knock back the ones on his side. Rather than doing likewise, she levitates the elves charging at her to the ceiling, causing them to shriek in outrage and doing absolutely nothing to interrupt the barrage of spells they're casting at them. She casts up a succession of shields, which is hardly efficient, but she doesn't want to hurt the elves. They have no say in this war of wizards and no choice but to defend their master's house, and she won't hurt them if she can help it.

"This way." Malfoy takes off at a run and Hermione follows, casting a Bubble Barrier behind them. It won't keep the house-elves back for long and it won't keep any wizards back at all, but it will have to do.


	5. The Tunnels

Draco makes for his old bedroom and tells himself it's because it's convenient. Close by and convenient. He throws the door shut the moment they're inside, weaving as many locking spells as he knows, as quickly as he can. 

Somewhere behind him, Hermione curses and he turns to see her looking out the window. 

"They've got reinforcements. There are masked Death Eaters outside. We need to get out of here."

The bedroom door rattles violently under the salvo of spells from the other side. Moving away from it, Draco drags himself to the other side of the room. 

"We will."

Breathing is a struggle. His ribs protest every intake of breath and blood soaks his robes, warm and sticky. He ignores it all and points his wand at the empty fireplace.

"Sanctimonia Vincet Semper."

Nothing happens. The secret passageway that leads to the tunnels under the house remains firmly closed.

"Malfoy…"

"Shut up, let me think." 

The bedroom looks exactly the way it did the day he left, a study in silver and green. There are Quidditch posters on the walls and a single Golden Snitch on the mantelpiece. It's signed by Viktor Krum. It was a birthday gift from his father.

He's a Malfoy. He's a Malfoy but so is Lucius and, caught between the two, the manor will obey the head of the family. Of course, it will. They're fucked. 

"Out the window or out the door," he says. "Pick your poison, Granger."

She glances out the window. 

"Six Death Eaters outside or three in here. Plus fifteen or so house-elves." 

They're royally fucked.

"The door. We can't take those many Death Eaters."

"We can't take those many house-elves, either." 

Draco can taste blood in his tongue. He smirks, a vicious smile that's only slightly hysterical. He was born in this house. If he's to die in it too, so be it. He'll take as many Death Eaters with him as he can.

"The Death Eaters outside, how many of them can you get with that toy of yours?"

Her smile is as vicious as his. "From here? If they're foolish enough to keep standing where I can see them? All of them."

They aren't and they won't. But it's no longer about getting out.

"Do it." 

He spells the window open and Hermione stands to the side of it, peering out as she reaches for an arrow. Orange. 

She nocks it and draws, lifting the bow and shifting her stance. Suddenly there's a loud clunk behind them, followed by the sound of stone scraping against stone. They whirl around, their weapons trained on the dark opening where the back of the fireplace used to be. For a second there's nothing there but darkness, and then a single house-elf emerges. 

"Master Draco, sir," Dobby says, his hands clutching the pillowcase he's wearing. "This way."

It may well be a trap, but they're cornered as it is, and if any of the house-elves can defy Lucius, it's Dobby. He's always been an odd one. 

"Come on." He makes for the entrance and Hermione follows. The wards keeping the bedroom door closed are in tatters; soon they'll fall away entirely. "Lock it up," he orders the house-elf when they're inside the tunnels. Lighting up his wand, he hurries down the passage, followed closely by Hermione. Behind them the passageway screeches shut, the sound echoing in the stone tunnels. "Dobby."

"Yes, sir, Master Draco, sir?"

Draco is too winded to speak and walk at the same time, but stopping isn't an option. "The Dark Lord entrusted my father with something. An object. Something secret, something valuable."

"Not obviously valuable," Hermione adds. "It might be something common, but Malfoy's dad would have treated it as valuable. Possibly kept it hidden."

"Something evil." It sounds ominous, the way the elf says it. It's not a question. And then he stops and bangs his head against the wall. "Bad Dobby. Bad, bad Dobby." 

"Dobby, no." Hermione stops and pulls the elf away from the wall, but the creature struggles free of her grasp and bangs his head against the wall again.

"Bad, bad, Dobby, criticising his master's possessions."

They really don't have time for this.

"Dobby, stop." He might not be the right Malfoy, but he is _a_ Malfoy, and the house-elf immediately goes still. "I forbid you from punishing yourself. Where is it?" 

"Here, Master Draco. In one of the smaller vaults, between Master Lucius's Hand of Glory and an evil, evil necklace." He glances at the wall and whimpers, but makes no move to hurt himself again.

"Take us there. That's an order, Dobby."

"Yes, sir, Master Draco, sir. Thank you, sir."

Torches light up along the walls as they make their way down, down, down, deeper under the house. The light shines off an increasingly large number of trinkets, gold and precious stones that fill the chests and weight down the shelves on either side of the passages. There are books as well, numbering in their thousands, most of them rare, dangerous, valuable or all three. The manor's vaults go on for miles and are home to the bulk of the Malfoy fortune, as well as to the largest collection of dark artifacts in Britain outside of Ministry hands. Draco would be shocked if Lucius allowed any of the Death Eaters down here, PHOENIX agents on the premises or not. But the house-elves are a different matter, and if they don't hurry out, they won't make it out.

The twins' pendant flickers to life and increases in brightness as they walk into a small room cluttered with cabinets and chests overflowing with cursed items and enchanted artifacts. Draco immediately spots the Hand of Glory. Next to it lies a small leather-bound book, ordinary and inconsequential but for the effect it has on his and Hermione's Horcrux-detecting amulets.

"Take it," he says, snatching it from the table and handing it to her. He's injured. If only one of them makes it out, it will be her. "Let's get out of here." 

"Malfoy, wait." 

"What?"

"Dobby. When they find out he helped us…"

He rolls his eyes, flinching when an ill-advised shift in position sends a stab of pain through his chest. "Granger—"

"Draco. He got us out."

Not yet, he hasn't. But Draco can't summon up the breath or the energy to argue. 

"Fine. Dobby, the exit by the south end of the property. Can you make sure it's open?"

"Yes, Master Draco, sir." 

"Do that, then join the others. Do not punish yourself. Do not tell anyone that you helped us. If anyone asks, I'm ordering you to tell them you didn't talk to us, you didn't help us in any way and you don't know how we go out. Understood?"

"Yes, sir, Master Draco, sir. Dobby understands, sir."

"Go."

The house-elf Disapparates with a pop.

"If your father asks…"

"I don't know." Draco doesn't, but he can make an educated guess. "He might not ask. Let's go."

They run. The tunnels are too narrow and cluttered for them to run fast, but still they run, as quickly and as well as they can, though Draco's lungs are burning and his ribs violently protest all that jostling. The sounds of pursuit grow behind them. Hurried footsteps and high-pitched voices echo in the tunnels, making it impossible to tell the number of pursuers or how close they are. 

Draco trips and almost loses his balance, causing Hermione to run into him and almost sending both of them crashing to the ground.

"Follow this tunnel," he says between clenched teeth, trying to think around the pain and the nausea. "Turn left at the intersection, then right, then left. Then follow the path up. The exit is only a few feet from the property limit. The moment you're past it, you can Disapparate."

"I'm not leaving you. Get moving."

"Hermione—"

"Fucking move it, Malfoy."

"You need to get that bloody Horcrux out of here."

"And I will if I have to. We're not there yet. Now move."

Biting back a curse, Draco makes himself straighten up and forces his legs to move. If they can stay ahead of the house-elves they can make it out. It's a big if, all things considered, but the tunnels are a maze and this isn't the only way out. The house-elves can't know which way they've come, not for sure. If they're fast and very, very lucky, they might just make it.

Draco isn't naturally optimistic. He's seen too much to be. But when he finally sees the dark sky at the end of the tunnel, he actually thinks they've made it. He's about to collapse and he's barely able to lift his right arm, but they've made it. He's so relieved he can almost taste the clear night air. And then a silhouette gets between them and the exit. 

Lucius steps into the light of the torches and Draco's fingers tighten around his wand. 

"You shouldn't have come here," he says, this man who taught him how to ride a broom, who waved him off when he got on the Hogwarts Express for the first time, who stood next to him as he got the Dark Mark branded into his skin.

"You'd kill your own son?"

"I have no son." 

The words cut deeper than any curse, even if Draco knows a bluff when he hears one. 

"No?" He motions at Hermione to stay behind him and moves forward, slow and steady, telegraphing his movements so that no one's startled into doing anything they'll regret. "And yet here I am, Father. Every bit the son you raised." Ambitious and proud and smart enough to know when to cut his losses.

Lucius does not move a muscle, he does not raise his wand, not even when Hermione edges around them both and makes for the exit. He only has eyes for Draco. 

"Thank you," Draco says once she's in the clear.

"You're the biggest disappointment of my life."

Draco nods, looking away. He does not doubt the sincerity of that. He walks past Lucius without saying another word, without so much as a backwards glance. The Golden Snitch stirs briefly in his pocket.

The cold night air fills his lungs the moment he steps outside, sharp like needles on skin. Everything hurts. 

Hermione is a dark shape by a tree a short distance away. She says nothing, but simply holds out her hand. The moment he touches it, they Disapparate. 

* * *

Draco flinches and Hermione winces in sympathy, but keeps pressing the cloth soaked in dittany to the slashes on his chest. 

"Easy," she says, her other hand steady on his arm. "They're deep. What on earth did they hit you with?" 

"Sectumsempra. Fucking Alecto." 

Hermione waits a second and then dips the cloth back in the bowl. The previously clear liquid is now a pallid pink. She squeezes the excess dittany and brings the cloth back to Draco's chest. He grits his teeth and squeezes her arm, but doesn't otherwise move. 

There's a packet of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on the nightstand, next to the bowl. In a few hours it will activate and take them to the secret location where Neville and Zabini set up a command centre. Other Portkeys in other safe houses will do the same for Ron and Harry, and for Fred and George. 

The safe house where they find themselves is a small studio apartment in the centre of Salisbury — close enough to Malfoy Manor to be in range of Apparition, but far enough away that they're as safe as they can hope to be after drawing the attention of so many Death Eaters. 

Bellatrix will have woken up by now.

Hermione glances at the window, but there's nothing out there but the dark sky and the illuminated spire of Salisbury Cathedral. The Death Eaters don't know where they are, they have no way of knowing. They're safe. 

They're safe.

They're safe.

Warm fingers coil around her wrist, and her gaze snaps back to Draco.

"Torture me a little faster, will you please?" 

"Sorry." 

The gashes from the curse slowly close under the combined power of the dittany and of Hermione's dogged persistence. She's no healer, but this much she knows: there are few things dittany can't solve, provided you have enough of it. Stings something fierce, but it beats the alternative. 

"They wouldn't have taken me alive," Draco says, and she looks up from what she's doing. His face is turned towards the window, but he meets her eyes before adding, "At the house. I wouldn't have let them take me alive. The things I know would've died with me."

_If you think we're going to lose, or if you find yourself cornered, or if they make it worth your while. _Hermione had thought nothing of it when she said it. She hadn't expected him to care.

"That's not why I went back," she says, and it's the truth. 

Most of the dittany is gone by the time Hermione is done. Once all the flesh has knitted back together, she drops the cloth in the bowl and places both hands on Draco's chest, gently following the ridges of his ribcage with her fingers. The bruising speaks for itself, but she needs to see what she's doing before she can do anything about it. His breath catches in his throat and he stifles a whimper, his fingers biting painfully into her arm.

"Almost done," she says soothingly. "Breathe." 

"The torture thing was a joke," he says between clenched teeth, "not a suggestion."

Hermione chuckles. "Stop being a baby." She moves her hands away and reaches for her wand. "You have a few broken ribs."

"You don't say." He eyes the wand dubiously. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"We'll find out, won't we?"

She does know what she's doing. Maybe she didn't go to Hogwarts or to any other fancy school, but it's amazing the amount of things a person can learn if they have the right book and enough motivation. A lifetime of scrapes, burns and broken bones is motivation plenty to learn how to fix what others insist on breaking.

"There," she says at last, moving out of the way so he can get up. "Good as new."

Draco swings his legs to the side of the bed and rises to his feet, rolling his shoulders.

"Right. Your turn." 

Hermione scoffs, crossing her legs on the bed. "There's not a scratch on me. Some of us know how to sneak around undetected in places where we're not meant to be."

Draco quirks an eyebrow and leans over her, tilting her face to the side and running his thumb over her cheek, where Bellatrix's nails dug in. 

"Undetected, huh?"

"Mostly undetected."

"Where was aunt dearest?" he asks, leaning down to fish a t-shirt out of his go-bag.

"Don't put it on on my account," she says with a shameless grin. 

The look Draco gives her as he pulls the t-shirt over his head is two-thirds amused and one-third knowing. 

"You're deflecting," he says. 

She is. In part, anyway. He's no longer in danger of bleeding out, after all, and she's not blind. 

Her smile widens. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Draco rolls his eyes and grabs a black pouch from his bag. It's small, no bigger than the span of a hand, but his whole arm disappear inside it as he rummages through it for what turns out to be a large silver sword with a jewel-encrusted hilt. Hermione stares at it.

"You pulled it out of a stone and now you get to rule England?"

"It's how they caught me. There was a second protective spell on the glass case. It's called Nodwydd. It's been in my family for generations. Ragnuk the First forged it to replace the sword he created for Godric Gryffindor. It's not as powerful as Gryffindor's Sword, but Longbottom thinks it may be enough to destroy the Horcruxes."

Of course he does. And he chose not to tell her, and he chose not to tell Draco about Bellatrix. Spies and their bloody secrets. No one can spill intel they don't have — she understands _that_ — but sometimes she thinks they keep each other in the dark out of nothing but habit and spite. Hermione eats the last scone in the break room, Neville withholds valuable information. Such are the petty tyrannies of middle-management. 

Putting the sword back in the pouch, Draco stares at her expectantly. Hermione stretches back on the bed and reaches for the pouch she left on the opposite nightstand. Opening it, she turns it upside down and shakes it until the wand and the small envelope fall on the bed.

"Is that—"

"Your aunt was kind enough to part with it."

Draco sits next to her and opens the envelope, looking inside. Hermione waits for him to put it all together.

"Her wand and a lock of hair. You think the Horcrux in Gringotts is in the Lestrange vault."

Clever boy.

"The twins are fairly sure."

"It will never work. The goblins will know."

"You think the Gringotts goblins will question Bellatrix Lestrange to her face?"

"I think she'll tear the heart out of anyone who tries to pull this off."

Maybe, but she'll have to catch them first.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" she asks, taking back the wand.

He falls back on the bed with a groan, but there's a smile on his voice when he says, "Bloody Gryffindors and your bloody plans to get yourselves and everyone else killed." 

The pillow Hermione throws at his head only just muffles his laughter. 

"I'd have been in Ravenclaw."

* * *

The Portkey activates at 10am on the dot. One moment they're in Salisbury, and the next the world turns upside down and the white walls of the small studio apartment shift and change, giving way to a modern-looking living room. The sun shines through large windows that take up most of the far wall and Draco almost trips back over the large L-shaped sofa. 

"We have made a startling discovery," George announces dramatically, the second he appears.

Fred holds up a ring and points at it. "He Who Must Not Be Named is a dandy."

"Certainly likes his bling." Harry tosses George a golden locket before turning towards a table by the window where someone left enough food to feed a small army. It looks like the breakfast buffet at a five-star hotel, leaving Draco in no doubt as to who that someone is. How very domestic of Blaise.

"Please tell me there's a crown to go with this," Fred says, inspecting the locket.

"Sorry to disappoint," Hermione says, fishing the diary from her bag. "No crown."

"Oh, this is so much better," he says, grabbing the book.

"Diary of a Teenage Psychopath." George takes it from his twin and flips through the pages. "Think of all the money we could make if we published it."

"We'd have to edit a little, of course."

"A little less murder, a little more angst."

"Add a redemption arc."

"And maybe a love triangle. Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange and—"

"Antonin Dolohov?"

"Barty Crouch. He likes them a little crazy."

"Right you are."

Draco falls back on the sofa and puts his feet up on the coffee table, listening to the twins rhapsodise about their plans to publicise the hit they clearly have on their hands, and does Draco know anyone in publishing? 'Cause he seems like the sort of guy who would. They'll even let him in on the profits, since he's all disowned and pathetic now. Ron says Gilderoy Lockhart probably knows a lot of people in publishing; Potter says that's how _The Diary of Lord Voldermort_ turns into _The Diary of Gilderoy Lockhart and How He Defeated Lord Voldemort_. Ron says he's probably right (though since his mouth is full of scones when he says it, it comes out as more of a vaguely approving grunt). 

Draco's exhausted, tired down to his bones, but it's a pleasant sort of tiredness. He can't believe they survived the night. He was so very sure they wouldn't. Everyone made it back alive, they have three Horcruxes between them, and it cost them no more than a few bruises and the odd flesh wound. Could it really be that easy?

The excited chatter moves around him like a lullaby and he's relaxed enough that if he were a different person, he might easily doze off. He isn't and he doesn't, but it's a near thing. Hermione plops down next to him on the sofa and holds a croissant out to him, and Draco pulls on the other end of it, tearing it in half. It melts in his mouth, soft and buttery. 

Longbottom and Blaise walk through the door to a chorus of cheers and dramatic tales of bravery in the face of adversity (which is to say, Gryffindor recklessness in the face of certain death), and would they like to join an exciting publishing venture? It will make them all wealthy and/or dead, but the twins have high hopes for wealthy. 

Longbottom doesn't smile. His gaze landed on Draco the moment he walked through the door and he has yet to look away. When he opens is mouth to speak, all he says is, "Malfoy, a word."


	6. Unhappy in its Own Way

Lucius Malfoy's severed head is left on the steps of the National Gallery at the crack of dawn. It's a few seconds before a Muggle spots it and starts yelling, and a quarter of an hour before Muggle police arrives at the scene. Within half an hour the Ministry of Magic has taken over, and within the hour word has been sent to PHOENIX by Daphne Greengrass, an Unspeakable with the Department of Mysteries who reports to Minerva McGonagall far more often (and far more accurately) than she does to Sarah Croaker, head of the Department. By the time McGonagall summons Neville Longbottom to her office, word has already spread up and down PHOENIX.

Longbottom breaks the news to Draco out in the hallway of the safe house. He doesn't sugarcoat it, he doesn't embellish. He sticks to the facts: Lucius is dead and the Death Mark was spotted high above Trafalgar Square. That Death Eaters were responsible is not in question, but PHOENIX has yet to determine who was personally responsible. There will be an investigation.

Draco doesn't need an investigation. He knows perfectly well who is responsible, he knows who is to blame. Lucius's death was payback for what he and Hermione did, payback for what they took. And it might have been done in part to punish Lucius for his failure to keep the Horcrux safe, but mostly it was done to punish Draco for turning on them, for selling out his own to the pack of Mudbloods and blood traitors that PHOENIX employs. He'd always known it might come to that.

Everyone in the living room is subdued when he and Longbottom walk back in. None of them has any cause to mourn the loss of a man who did everything in his power to crush them like bugs, but still they accord Draco the respect of not openly celebrating his father's death.

He dismisses their awkward expressions of sympathy with a shrug. The boy in that painting in the study — the boy who loved his parents, who worshipped his father — he's a stranger. Draco wouldn't recognise him if he saw him. He knew the cost of leaving. He made his choice and Lucius made his too. They'd both known what the consequences might be.

They'd both known what they might have to live with.

Ignoring Longbottom's suggestion that they all get some sleep and reconvene later, he fetches Nodwydd and hands it to Potter. They have work to do.

* * *

People in Hermione's line of work aren't heavy sleepers and she wakes up to the sound of steps a few seconds before there's a knock on the door. She finds Luna outside, staring at a corner of the ceiling where a spider made its web.

"Do spiders sleep, do you think?" she asks without looking at Hermione.

"No clue." Maybe spiders don't, but she does, and she'd dearly love to get back to it.

"Malfoy doesn't," Luna says, and suddenly Hermione is wide awake. "Not much, anyway. Did you know spider's web is used in the _Silvanus Dicit_ potion, used by the Ministry to mind-control people?"

"Luna, why are you here?"

The witch blinks and looks at Hermione, as if surprised to find her there, never mind the fact that they've been speaking for the past minute.

"Malfoy," she says, tilting her head. "He didn't show up for our Legilimency session."

"He's probably asleep. We were up all night."

Luna looks up at the web. "He's not sleeping."

"How do you know?"

"Do you think spiders dream?"

God give her patience.

"Luna, focus. How do you know Draco isn't sleeping?"

"He's gone up to the house," she says, and it takes Hermione a second to realise she means Number 12. "There isn't anything up there but dust and spiders and ghosts. Not real ghosts, just— You know, the other kind. The sad kind."

Hermione does know. Without bothering to change, she closes the door behind her and makes for the stairs. Luna is no longer paying attention. Her eyes are once again fixed on that spider on that web.

The agent quarters are on the lowest level of PHOENIX, several storeys below street level. Hermione takes the lift to the main lobby and walks up to the large fireplace on the far wall. No one spares her a glance as she keeps walking, the flames turning blue as she crosses through to Number 12 proper.

The bright lights and clean, minimalistic features of PHOENIX give way to a dark and cluttered living room. It's still daytime, barely past 3 o'clock, but hardly any light makes it through the dirt that cakes the windows. The furniture is hidden from view by sheets that were once white and the wallpaper is stained and peeling in places. Despite the fire burning in the fireplace, the air smells damp.

Number 12 Grimmauld Place was once the lavish, luxurious home of the Black family. Wealthy pure-bloods sat on these chairs, slept in these beds, dined and conversed and entertained in these halls, and all the while congratulated themselves and each other on the superiority of their circumstances, of their skill, of their blood. Toujours Pur.

Always pure.

And now most of them are dead or locked away, and their home is a rotting husk sat atop an organisation that employs the likes of Hermione to take down the likes of them. A happy ending.

The floorboards creak under Hermione's feet as she makes her way through the house, the soft creeping of the fire fading away in the distance. There's no one around; the ground floor is deserted but for the Doxies and Boggarts that have overrun the place. Number 12 doesn't provide the only entryway to PHOENIX HQ and most agents prefer to avoid it entirely. The place has all the charm of a tomb.

Hermione draws her wand as she climbs the stairs to the first floor. She does not expect to need it — there's a Fidelius charm on the house; it's as safe as the headquarters below — but the place gives her the creeps.

There's nothing on the first floor but more dust and more Boggarts. In the drawing room, a single Doxie chews on a corner of the large tapestry that shows the sprawling Black family tree. That tapestry is much like the portraits in Malfoy Manor: the careful record-keeping of a people obsessed with where they came from and what that means about who they are. Hermione stares at the burned-off spot where Sirius's portrait once was. He'd often joked about it when he was alive, saying it meant he'd done something right. But Hermione had seen him standing in this very spot, staring at it lost in thought, a grave look on his face and an almost-empty bottle of wine by his side.

There are other empty spaces besides his, other people burned off the family tree for failing to live up to the Blacks' idea of duty and blood purity. Cedrella Black, who married a blood-traitor. Andromeda Black, who married a Muggle-born. Regulus Black, who turned Death Eater before he turned traitor, and who accomplished nothing by deserting except dying.

Andromeda is a singed hole between Bellatrix's and Narcissa's portraits. The Black sisters were once the toast of wizarding society. Now one's dead, the other's a blood-traitor and the third one is bat-shit crazy. Toujours pur indeed.

Turning away from the tapestry, Hermione goes back to her search. There's no one on the first floor, and no one on the second floor either. She's starting to think Luna sent her on a wild goose's chase, but the moment she reaches the third floor she hears something. It's faint and deep, like the distant clattering of wood. Too rhythmic to be accidental, too haphazard to be deliberate. Ignoring the closed doors on the third floor landing, she keeps going up. The clattering gets louder the higher she climbs, and she can hear other things too. The shrill clinking of china, the high ringing of metal, the distinctive sound of glass breaking, like the shattering of a light-bulb. There are only two doors on the fourth floor landing. The one to the left is closed, the one to the right ajar. On it there's an engraved sign with the words 'Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black.'

Hermione pushes it open and stops, flinching at the deafening cacophony caused by the furniture jolting and jerking and rattling against the floorboards like a poltergeist on steroids. The air is heavy with the smell of ozone, magic snapping and crackling against her skin. A book flies off a shelf and hits the opposite wall with a heavy thud before falling to the ground on top of a pile of other books, their spines cracked and their covers torn, loose pages flying everywhere.

Her gaze falls on Draco, who's sitting on the floor next to the window, arms propped on his bent knees. He's the only quiet spot in the chaotic room. He looks up when Hermione comes in and holds her gaze for all of a second before closing his eyes when a Bludger rushes through the air and punches a hole in the wall. That startles her out of her surprise and she crosses the room, falling to her knees in front of him.

"Draco." She lifts a hand to his face. "Hey, look at me."

He opens his eyes, his expression a mask of poise and composure. And then another light bulb shatters across the room and the window pane cracks, and some of that composure bleeds away as he shuts his eyes and grits his teeth with a frustrated sigh. Hermione curls her fingers around the back of his neck and he leans his forehead against hers, his left hand gripping her arm.

"Breathe," she says softly, increasing the pressure of her fingers on his skin. Around them the room wails and howls — magic giving shape to rage, to guilt, to grief.

* * *

Draco tries to breathe, he tries hard to get a grip. He never lost control of his magic like this, not even as a child just learning to levitate his toys. All of his earliest lessons were lessons in control and he learned them well. He learned how to keep an iron grip on his mind, on his magic, on himself. He kept his head while doing the Dark Lord's bidding; he kept it while doing Bellatrix's. He wouldn't have survived this long if he hadn't. Draco perfected control to an art.

And now he's lost it over something he saw coming a hundred miles away.

Frustration rises like bile in his throat and a loud crack echoes in the room as a wooden plank curls away from the floor. Hermione's fingers tighten on the back of his neck, her breath warm on his skin as she whispers a string of comforting nothings in his ear. The storm raging in and around him drowns the words, but he latches on the sound of her voice, to the feeling of her body pressed against his, to the dull ache of her fingers digging into his skin.

There once was a boy who loved his father. There once was a boy who hated his father. There once was a man who was to blame for leaving and for not leaving soon enough, for turning his back on his family and for doing unspeakable things for his family. A man who never learned what to do with the line between love and duty and doing the right thing.

Regulus was lucky. He died before having to deal with any consequences, before having to learn that whatever choice he made, it would always be the wrong one.

"Easy, Draco. Breathe. In and out. That's it, just like that. In and out."

He drops his head to Hermione's shoulder, ignoring the ache in his chest, ignoring the burning in his eyes, focusing on her. Slowly, very slowly, the world quiets down until the only sound left is the gentle buzzing of a Snitch. Even Hermione has gone quiet, silently running her fingers through his hair. Draco lets her, too exhausted and hollowed out to move.

* * *

The sun is low in the sky. Hermione and Draco sit silently side by side, their backs to the wall. A Golden Snitch flits about the dilapidated room, hovering above the wreck that was once a dresser, surveying the pile of torn books next to the half-collapsed bed, rising to inspect the large holes left by a Bludger, by a Quidditch trophy, by a paperweight.

Hermione only realises she's freezing when Draco throws an arm around her shoulders and flicks his wand at the window, repairing the broken glass. It's the first he's moved in hours.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, leaning against him and letting his body heat warm her up. Leggings and a tank top had been perfectly comfortable in her room several levels below, but the only source of heat in Number 12 proper is the fire burning on the ground floor.

"No," Draco says, and that's probably for the best. Hermione can't even deal with her own hangups; she's certainly not qualified to handle anyone else's.

She tilts her face up to look at Draco and asks, "What do you want?"

The Golden Snitch glides down towards them and Draco reaches up with his free hand, plucking it out of the air. The Snitch folds its wings, going still, and he stares at it for one long moment, turning it between his fingers.

"I want to make them hurt," he finally says.

And that she can help with.


	7. Dragons, Daffodils and Bad Decisions

Pansy Parkinson is a busy woman. She has agents to oversee and reports to go through and a powerful need not to put up with the bunch of chaos children Longbottom calls a team. Alas, the Minister for Magic has opinions on wizards throwing curses around where Muggles can see them, as well as opinions on large magical creatures bursting out of buildings just in time to be featured on the Muggle evening news. And while he understands PHOENIX must do what PHOENIX must do, if they could tone it down, he'd appreciate it. It makes for damn awkward conversations with the Prime Minister.

(Not that the Minister for Magic knows about PHOENIX, of course. Secret organisation and all that. Very hush, hush.)

Merlin give her patience.

"Get out," she orders the wizards and witches gathered around the modified Pensieve, most of whom have the good sense to scamper without her having to repeat herself. Blaise — who used to have sense and now has two annoying gingers instead — does no more than quirk an eyebrow in her direction. The magical quill hovering in front of him carries on scribbling furiously on an equally airborne sheet of parchment. Pansy ignores it and him.

"What can we do for you, ma'am?" Longbottom doesn't look at her. The projection from the Pensieve casts a soft blueish glow over his features as he watches the images: the Weasley twins duelling the Carrow siblings; a flash of light as Potter ducks out of the way of an Unforgivable; Granger running along the edge of rooftops high off the street, Apparating from one to the next, flashing in and out of mid-air, Apparating down to the street. Draco alone in Avery Hall, in the lobby at Gringotts, surrounded by Death Eaters in a street off Covent Garden.

Pansy stops next to Neville and watches the succession of images. They're from different days, different missions, but they all tell the same story.

"Patil is concerned." Which is not what she came here to discuss, but the Minister can wait his turn.

"Parvati?" Neville asks.

"Padma."

"Ah."

Yes, ah. Another thing Pansy doesn't need is Padma Patil flooding her office with memos on how Agent Longbottom needs to stop undermining her by allowing his assets to skip mandatory counselling. And while Padma understands Neville's pathological need to live up to his parents' legacy, maybe Parkinson should urge him to examine whether he's trying to make up for his grandmother's exacting and impossibly high standards by being an overly lax parental figure to the agents under him.

Maybe what Pansy needs is for McGonagall to stop dumping all this nonsense on her.

"Malfoy is a problem," she says. The image above the Pensieve changes: a golden chalice, a silver sword. A blinding flash of light when the two collide.

"He won't double-cross us. Not after what they did to his father."

"I don't expect he will, but that's not my concern and you know it. He's being reckless, and in this company, that's saying something. Sooner or later he's going to get himself or one of the others killed."

The light shifts and the images changes again: goblins running, the glint of light on gold, an arrow through a Death Eater's mask.

"Hermione has it in hand," Neville says.

"Really? Granger? That's who you're expecting to be a moderating influence? Longbottom, Potter is currently the most level-headed person on that team, and if that doesn't worry you, it should."

Neville Longbottom smiles the gentle smile of a man not at all disturbed by his assets' lacklustre survival instincts and deplorable lack of common sense. Blaise smirks.

Pansy rolls her eyes. Whatever. What does she care? The paperwork will be a nightmare when they inevitably get themselves killed — particularly since neither Potter nor the Weasley twins are agents — but she's Deputy Director of PHOENIX. She can delegate.

"At least pretend to keep them on a tighter leash," she says, turning away. "And Longbottom," she adds, pausing by the door. "I don't want to hear any more stories about dragons flying over London."

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

Hermione is having the time of her life. Sure, she has collected more injuries in the last few weeks than in all her time at PHOENIX before that, and the closest they've come to identifying the last Horcruxes is Fred's half-joking suggestion that they look into the portrait of Sir Cadogan. That illustrious knight spent the better part of the twins' time at Hogwarts telling on them to Filch, even though they were always an absolute delight to him and only tried to set his painting on fire the one time. Honest. It being possessed by the evil soul of Lord Voldemort would explain a lot.

They don't have a thing to go on. Hogwarts is massive. Even with the twins' pendants, it would take them years to find any Horcruxes, and they don't have years. They might not have weeks. There are credible rumours that the Death Eaters are closer than ever to restoring the Dark Lord to corporeal form. If they don't find the Horcruxes before then, they might not get another chance. It should worry Hermione and sometimes it does, but not often and not for long. She's too busy enjoying herself.

The team spends most of their time together. They make plans and review ops and hit the homes of known Death Eaters, looking for information or clues or a way to vent. Sometimes they just hang out, sprawled all over the twins' massive living room, too tired and comfortable to move. Blaise points out often and loudly that he's not their maid, and if they insist on leaving their belongings all over the flat as if they own the place, he's going to start charging them rent. Then he usually goes off and orders pizza. Draco is shocked that Blaise knows how to use a telephone. Hermione is shocked that he never murdered the twins in their sleep. He's officially their private secretary, but is really more akin to a very prim, very harried babysitter.

Hermione has known most of them for a very long time. Ron was already an agent when she was recruited, one of many Weasleys who've devoted their lives to PHOENIX. And though the twins never officially joined the agency, they've devoted many years to harassing the R&D department and playing pranks on high-ranking agents. There are many people inside PHOENIX who feel Parkinson has shown great restraint in not having them assassinated and their bodies dumped in the Thames, never mind the fact that their parents and older brothers are decorated heroes.

As for Harry, every witch and wizard in Britain knows who Harry Potter is. The prophecy made at the time of his birth said he'd be the one to bring down the Dark Lord, and he was. At seventeen, no less. He's a hero and the Weasleys are legacies, and Hermione is the Muggle-born thief who Neville Longbottom plucked off the gutter on a whim. They haven't really tended to run in the same circles.

Except now they're everywhere she turns, making jokes and asking questions and dragging her from one end of London to the other — during missions, during downtime, one time in the middle of the night because Ron was feeling peckish, Harry had never had kebab, and Hermione was the only one who knew the first thing about Muggle money. Draco tagged along too, looking haughtily disdainful the entire time and ending up eating half her doner box.

Hermione knows it can't last. They'll find the Horcruxes eventually and it will be the end of their merry band. But they haven't yet and she means to enjoy this while she can. She likes it, she likes them. She likes that Harry always wants her opinion on their positioning and the layout of their targets because she has a good eye. She likes that Ron keeps teasing her about pouring the milk first and the tea second like a bloody heathen. She likes that she keeps having to hide her bow from the twins because they think they can improve it. (_"Come on, Hermione. We'll be careful." "Just a little change here and a little improvement there." "We can make it soooo much better." "Touch my bow and you'll wake up under a pile of frogs."_)

She likes that Blaise complains to anyone who will listen that he didn't sign up for any of this, but still keeps a detailed inventory of her arrows, and marched down to PHOENIX on one memorable occasion to demand to know why Seamus was behind on the latest explosive batch. (Turned out it was because the twins had decided to make some improvements and the resulting explosion had collapsed part of the east wing lab.)

She likes that Draco always looks up from the street at the end of a skirmish to make sure she's still on her perch, and that he lets her collapse half on top of him in the twins' living room while they wait for Neville to arrive for post-mission debriefing. She likes that he spends most of their mission prep time playing with her hair while listening to Harry's latest plan, and she likes that he does it even when he and Harry invariably end up screaming at each other over Draco's "unsurprising ruthless streak for a Slytherin" and Harry's "ridiculous notions of honour that would embarrass even a Hufflepuff." (The twins gasp dramatically at that and offer to stand as Harry's seconds should he feel the need to demand satisfaction for such an insult.)

Neville doesn't say much, but just watches and smiles like a man pleased with the results of his scheming, and she likes that too. Apart from him, she never had people she could call her own and she finds she enjoys it. If she gets to keep them a little longer, she's more than okay with it.

And then she goes and ruins it. Because she's clever like that. It's the day they break into Gringotts. They've put it off as long as they can while trying to work out all the kinks in a plan at least forty per cent likely to get them all killed. (An absurd, meaningless number, according to Zabini, who adds that since they're pulling random numbers out of their asses, the accurate number is eighty three per cent.)

Whatever the odds, they make it. George almost gets his head blown off by a curse, Harry almost drowns under a pile of glorified golden mugs, and a dragon is seen flying over London for the first time since the 1300s, but they get the fourth Horcrux. All in a day's work.

The celebration at the twins' is joyous and loud and outrageous. Neville watches with indulgent amusement as Fred and George bring out all their party tricks, most of which are too experimental or dangerous to be found on the shelves of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Ron almost cuts off his own leg with a contraption George copied off a Muggle moving picture and which he calls a Lucas Stick. (_"Get it? Lucas Stick. Pun Intended."_)

Harry's head grows to five times its usual size when he tries the twins' _special_ Pumpkin Pasties (the special part being the Beatitudinem Potion, which causes supreme happiness in whoever takes a bite, but has the unfortunate side effect of making them a little bloated).

Fred brings out a game of his own design that involves tickling a giant mandrake, transfigurating a teacup into an ostrich, and summoning an actual demon. Whoever gets tricked into promising the demon his or her firstborn loses.

Zabini puts an end to that quickly enough when Fred — who's easily the drunkest one in company very far from sober — tries to tickle the demon.

The argument over whether demons are ticklish is still going strong when Hermione heads for the roof, followed by Draco. His hand is warm in hers and he wraps an arm around her waist halfway up the stairs, pulling her back against him. Her laughter echoes in the stairwell as he pushes her against the banister, his lips warm on hers, his body hard against her.

"Climbing first, kissing later," she says, pushing him off and laughing at his expression of mock injury.

It's a chilly October night and drizzle clings to Hermione's hair and clothes, but she neither notices nor cares. She broke into Gringotts today, and right back out again, and flew the length of England on the back of a dragon. As far as she's concerned, the sun is shining in the sky above.

The garden that takes up most of the flat roof clearly agrees with her, for the pots and flowerbeds are overflowing with flowers in bloom — roses and daffodils and tulips sharing space with deadly nightshade and tetterwort and lilies of the valley, all equally indifferent to such earthly concerns as the season or the weather.

Draco tugs on her hand when she's halfway to the edge of the roof and Hermione turns back with a huff of laughter, letting him pull her back to him. It's just like gravity, as natural as falling. They're drunk on victory and on each other and on whatever George put in the pink, fizzy drinks he poured them all when Blaise wasn't looking. It's a night for celebrating, a night for bad decisions, though this doesn't feel like one. It feels easy and comfortable and fun, and Hermione doesn't stop to think that the first rule of jumping off high places is knowing where you'll land.


	8. Irresponsible, Reckless and Self-destructive

The sex isn't the problem. Sex seldom is. Draco has slept with socialites and Ministry staffers and the odd journalist — for information or political gain or good old-fashioned lust. Sex is easy. Sex is uncomplicated. What's complicated, what's causing alarm bells to go off in his head, is her. It's Hermione and how she got under his skin in ways he hadn't even realised until he woke up next to her in her PHOENIX quarters. Draco Malfoy doesn't wake up next to people because Draco Malfoy doesn't fall asleep next to people. And it's not because of some unsentimental macho nonsense, either. Draco is just aware of how easy it is to kill someone in their sleep. Trust will get a person killed as quickly and cleanly as the Death Curse, and twice as painfully. He knows that. He's seen it, he's caused it. He knows better.

Yet despite all these things he knows, he still falls asleep next to Hermione Granger.

And that's not even the worst of it, not really. It's all the things that have been leading up to it. It's the way she's always around, the way he seeks her out when she isn't. It's always knowing where she is during a fight and ignoring the enemies on his six because he trusts her arrows to take them down. It's a world of small touches and easy affection and implicit trust that suddenly turn to ashes in his mouth, because he knows how easily those things can be used to twist and manipulate. He knows how easily he himself has used them.

Even worse: it's clear to Draco that she's becoming someone who could be used as leverage against him. It makes her a target. It makes him a fool.

People in their line of work lead short lives. It's a fool who shortens his further — who shortens the lives of the people he cares about further — by allowing himself to be emotionally compromised. Hermione is a weakness, she's a liability, and Draco knows better. She ought to know better too, of course, but Gryffindors have always been a reckless lot — and she _would_ have been a Gryffindor, whatever she may think to the contrary.

It's time for Draco to remember that despite the company he's keeping these days, the colours of his House were silver and green.

* * *

Draco is avoiding her. To the casual observer that might not be apparent — they're in each other's company so often that they might as well be joined at the hip — but he's avoiding her all the same. He no longer lingers at the end of debriefs, no longer hangs out with the rest of them outside of missions, and whenever they speak he's so perfectly, so unfailingly professional that she could scream. Gone is the warmth, the closeness, the easy camaraderie, and she's not sure who she's more angry at — him or herself.

Sometimes people have sex — sometimes people have fun, hot, ill-advised sex — and it doesn't have to mean a bloody thing or change a bloody thing and she can't believe he's freezing her out like this. They're not teenagers. The hurt is a sharp, stinging thing in her chest, and it's all too easy to wonder if things would be different if _she_ were different: if she weren't Muggle-born, if she'd gone to Hogwarts, if she were the sort of girl Draco Malfoy might like.

And that just pisses her off.

Hermione has spent years trying to convince herself and everyone else that she _is_ good enough — good enough for prospective adoptive parents, good enough for the wizarding world, good enough for PHOENIX. And she is. She's good enough for all of that and more, and she won't let him or anyone else make her question that. She won't. She refuses to.

He wants to keep her at arm's length? Fine. Whatever. She's a big girl. She can deal.

The day Neville sends them out to apprehend a Death Eater informant who works deep in the Department of Mysteries, she's a picture of poise and professionalism. A picture of poise and professionalism who snorts when Draco gets hit on the side of the head by a flying brain.

What? She can be petty if she wants to.

It's PHOENIX official business, unrelated to their hunt for the Horcruxes, but Fred and George were bored, and it's Harry's day off from the Auror Office, so they're all there too, which is fortunate because what should have been an easy extraction on the street right outside the Ministry turns into a pitched battle when a couple of dozen Death Eaters Apparate out of nowhere.

It's almost as if the Unspeakable-slash-Informant were bait, and my, aren't Death Eaters cunning?

It doesn't matter. It's just what Hermione needed, the perfect outlet for all her pent-up frustration. Throwing Draco off a building for being a prat would've been better, but this works too.

She runs through her stock of arrows with fluid movements, nocking and aiming and shooting with practised ease: taking down masked figures down on the street; shooting them off their brooms; turning in place just in time to take down the first Death Eater that thinks to Apparate behind her. She doesn't stay put after that, and not just because it makes her an easy target. She's also not above showing off.

Hermione Apparates from roof to roof and back again, breaking the pattern randomly to Apparate mid-air high off the street, with just enough time to loose an arrow and Disapparate again. It's a neat trick. Hermione can't use her wand and the bow at the same time, so she needs to Apparate high enough and be fast enough to aim, shoot and reach for her wand again before falling to her death. She is that fast. Fast enough not to break her neck doing something Padma has often decried as "irresponsible, reckless and frankly self-destructive" and that the twins have often described as "absolutely wicked".

Let's see a pure-blood pull _that_ off.

Curses tear chunks off buildings, and the smell of ozone fills the air as magic barrels through walls and cars and people. Whatever civilians there were have taken cover out of sight. There are sirens in the distance, and Aurors start Apparating just as more Death Eaters arrive. Perhaps the Ministry isn't entirely useless after all.

Two Death Eaters Apparate on either side of Hermione up on her perch, and she whacks one of them over the head with her bow and jump clean off the building. No one dares follow. A flick of her wrist sees her Apparate five meters above her current position, perfectly placed to take down one of the men. She doesn't wait to see the arrow find its mark before Disapparating and Apparating again on the opposite building. The man she shot is flat on his back, an arrow sticking out of his throat. When the other one turns towards her, she smiles prettily and bows. And then she Disapparates again.

It's like flying, like playing a game — a fun, exciting, slightly demented game. It doesn't occur to Hermione to be scared because the sort of person who'd be scared couldn't do the job. She'll be scared later; she'll second-guess herself later; she'll take stock of all the bruises and cuts and scrapes later. Now there's only speed and instinct and muscle-memory. Apparate, shoot, Disapparate, do it again, do it better, do it faster, faster, faster, until it's all a blur of dark cloaks and masked faces, and arrows and spells flying through the air.

When Hermione Apparates mid-air high above the end of the street where Harry and Draco stand back-to-back duelling half a dozen Death Eaters, she changes targets last second to take down the woman who Apparates that very second behind Ron. The angle is wrong, her position is wrong, and she allows herself to fall farther than she normally would before loosing the arrow just right. It's still plenty of time to smirk when the arrow goes straight through the Death Eater's mask's left eye. Her fingers curl around her wand and she's about to Disapparate when pain explodes across her back, sharp and blinding. The wand slips from her slack fingers before Hermione can even register what happened. She still tries to reach for one of her trick arrows, the one with the grappling hook, but she knows without having to look that it's too late.

* * *

It hurts. Everything hurts. Hermione drifts in and out of consciousness, unable to move or speak or think, unable to do anything but hurt. There's movement and voices all around her, hands touching her arms, her chest, the side of her neck. And she wants to flinch away, she wants to curl up into a ball and hide, but she can't move, she can't so much as open her eyes, and everything hurts, hurts, hurts.

A sharp stab of pain tears a scream from her throat and she arches off the bed, but moving only makes everything worse and she hadn't even known that was possible.

The mattress dips and there's a cool hand on her cheek.

"Bloody do something," a voice says a short distance away, at the same time as someone else's, "Help her!"

"Sir, please. We must work. We _are_ helping her. This is a good sign."

"This is— Are you fucking mental?"

"Auror Potter— Ah, Agent Longbottom. Glad you're here. My team needs space to work and the room is a little crowded."

"Right. Everyone out. Harry, please. Now, Ron. That means you too, Malfoy."

The hand pulls away, and a sob rises in Hermione's throat.

* * *

It's nighttime outside St Mungo's and the lights are dimmed low in Hermione's room. She ought to be asleep. It's the middle of the night and she needs to rest; her healers were very clear on that, and they've certainly poured enough potions down her throat to bring it about. And yet Hermione can't fall asleep. Every time she starts to drift off, the feeling of falling jerks her awake again. It's aggravating. It's worrisome. She was never afraid of falling before.

Lifting a hand, she touches the petals of one of the bright red flowers that sit on her nightstand. The movement sends a little painful twinge down her spine, but it's only the idea of pain, rather than actual pain. The healers worked a small miracle; come morning there won't be any sign left that she fell down the height of a four-storey building. Just like that. As easy as pulling a rabbit out of a top hat. When Hermione broke her arm when she was seven, she had to wear a cast for over a month.

A pink Pygmy Puff hops on the back of her hand and skips a few steps down her arm before tumbling down on the bed. Hermione huffs a silent laugh and puts it back on the nightstand. It's not the only Pygmy Puff; there are at least four others, to the healers' great disgust. It was the twins' doing, as were most of the flowers. (_"We were going to bring flowers and balloons." "But we reckoned the balloons might be a bit insensitive, on account of, you know—" "You going splat on the ground and all that." _Ron had shaken his head, Harry had tried hard not to laugh, and Neville had convinced the healers to let the Pygmy Puffs stay. _"For morale."_)

They'd all camped in her room for hours, keeping her company and trying to make her laugh as magic slowly stitched her back together. All of them except Draco, who's been busy elsewhere, doing other things, with other people, somewhere else, not here. It doesn't matter. She doesn't care. She doesn't, and if she keeps telling herself that, it's bound to be true eventually.

Movement ripples across the wards Harry set around the room and Hermione's hand darts for her wand. As instincts go, it's a foolish one. The wards will keep out anyone who wishes to harm her, and the sharp jolt of pain is a stark reminder that magic or no magic, she did fall down the height of a four-storey building and should probably refrain from any sudden movements.

There's blood on Draco's collar when he walks in. It's the first thing she sees. It's barely visible in the dark fabric, but Hermione has eyes like a hawk. She does not miss the blood, nor the singed edges of his robes, nor the spot on his chest where a curse burned through the outer layer of the protective vest.

Before she can open her mouth, something lands on the blanket next to her. It's a Death Eater's mask. What's left of it, anyway. Putting down her wand, Hermione touches the place where blood stained the elaborate carvings, where the metal bent and twisted until it broke. She doesn't know who shot her out of the sky and she didn't bother to ask. All the Death Eaters Disapparated when PHOENIX reinforcements joined the Ministry forces, and it's doubtful whether any of the Aurors or PHOENIX agents would have recognised someone by their Death Eater's mask alone. Draco would, though. Draco did.

"Some people bring flowers," she says, looking up at him.

"Some people lack imagination."

Even his voice sounds exhausted, and the raw honesty of it touches Hermione more than the broken mask could. It's genuine in a way Draco so seldom is, even at the best of times. And these haven't been the best of times. For the past few weeks he might as well have been carved in stone. He's not stone now, though, but flesh and blood — messy and flawed and so painfully human.

He's flesh and blood as he stands be the door, his shoulders heavy with tension; flesh and blood when he moves across the room, his movements a little too stiff, a touch too careful; flesh and blood when he sits down next to her, when she curls against him, when he sighs against her hair, his body relaxing against hers.

"Lie down," he says after a moment, pressing a kiss to her temple.

"I'm fairly sure that at this point you need a healer more than I do," she says, but does it anyway, absurdly tired by the simple act of sitting up. Her fingers curl around the edge of his robes, as if such a childish gesture were enough to keep him there. It's a tell the size of the world, but Hermione doesn't care. She can have pride tomorrow. Tonight she'd rather have him.

Draco's hand is warm and steady on her cheek, his thumb gentle as it brushes her skin. It's comforting and familiar, and it's not long before Hermione starts to drift off. The room is quiet apart from the soft chirping of the Pygmy Puffs and the lights dim as she closes her eyes. Draco's voice pulls her back from the edge of sleep.

"At the manor, when they caught me, you shouldn't have come back for me." It takes her a second to follow the non sequitur. "It was a reckless, pointless, foolish thing to do."

She meets his eyes for a second before looking pointedly at his left hand, which she can see plainly even in the half-light and which is curled up protectively against his chest and covered almost entirely in cuts and bruises — black and blue and angry red.

"And what do you call that?"

"A reckless, pointless, foolish thing to do."

Ah.

"So that's what's been eating at you?"

Draco doesn't pull his hand away, he doesn't stop the gentle movement of his thumb across her cheek.

"When you hit the ground, I could have set the whole lot of them on fire. Going after Burke alone, it was— It wasn't smart. And going back for me at the manor wasn't smart either. You and I are becoming one more thing that will get the other killed."

"One more, one less, what difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference." He leans over her, his hand trailing down the side of her face to curl around her throat. "And do you understand how easily I could hurt you? The things I could do to you?"

_'The things you could do to me'_ goes unsaid.

"I'm not scared of you, Draco."

"You should be."

Maybe. But Hermione would rather die a fool than live a coward. She suspects he would too.

The hand on her throat gives way easily when she lifts her head off the pillow and kisses him, a soft brush of lips.

"I'm not scared."

"So I gather, but your self-preservation instincts are demonstrably terrible."

She snorts, falling back on the pillow. "We spent years actively trying to kill each other without managing. I don't think we'll pull it off by accident."

"You're an optimist."

"Don't get me wrong, I'll definitely smother you with a pillow if you ever piss me off enough. But I'd expect a big, powerful, pure-blood like yourself to be able to hold his own."

"Forget I brought it up," he says, rolling his eyes. "Just go to sleep."

"Of course, if you did try to double-cross me," she continues, undeterred, "you'd have to sleep the rest of your life with an eye open, so I understand your concern."

"Keep talking and I'm the one who's going to smother you with a pillow."

She laughs and there's a soft smile on Draco's lips when he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead.

"Go to sleep," he repeats in a voice that tugs at all the parts of her that missed him.

"Stay," she says, because she's not too proud to ask.

For a moment she thinks he won't, for a moment she thinks he'll say no, but then Draco settles down next to her on the bed and wraps an arm around her, drawing her closer against him.

And Hermione, who's never found it easy to fall asleep next to someone, who's led a life in which trust was always a luxury likely to get her killed, she soon dozes off, lulled by the rise and fall of his chest.

When Neville walks in several hours later, they're still both fast asleep.


	9. Epilogue

Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, dies almost exactly on the same spot where not too many years before Harry Potter brought him to his knees. There will be no do-overs this time around, no cards up anyone's sleeves. It's over.

Draco sits down on the ground, too tired to care about how it looks. The courtyard is full of people — people laughing and crying and hugging each other amid a mess of fallen columns and half-collapsed walls. There are PHOENIX agents in their black uniforms and Aurors in Ministry robes. There are teachers too: Professor Flitwick, who never much cared for Draco; Professor Sprout, who always gave him top marks; Professor Trelawney, who predicted his death at least ten times per lesson in increasingly gory ways. There are many others too, old teachers and new teachers, and teachers who were probably already there when Voldemort was a boy.

And then there are the students, boys and girls in Hogwarts uniforms — Gryffindor red and Hufflepuff yellow, Ravenclaw blue and even Slytherin green. Boys and girls who made a different choice than Draco did, once upon a time. The school came out in force to defend itself and to defend the wizarding world. Dumbledore would've been proud.

"Bloody hell, that has done me in, that has." Ron falls on the ground next to him, while Potter sits down somewhat less dramatically.

"Where's Hermione?" he asks, and Draco looks up at the second-floor gallery where she'd been just a few minutes before. There's no one there now.

Hogwarts is massive, a veritable maze of rooms and corridors and stairways. There's no finding someone who doesn't want to be found, but Draco knows where to look. The Astronomy Tower is the highest point in the castle and he's not surprised to find Hermione there, sitting on the ledge. He sits down next to her, feet dangling against the wall, and for several minutes neither of them says a word. The light of the sun bounces off the snow that covers the grounds around Hogwarts, giving the landscape a soft glow.

"It's over," she says at last, breaking the silence.

"Yes."

"Everyone can finally go back to living their lives."

From anyone else it would have been an expression of relief, but that's not how she means it and that's not how he takes it. Draco wraps an arm across her back and kisses the side of her head.

"PHOENIX isn't going anywhere," he says. "Neither am I."

"What, you don't want to go back to being wizarding Britain's most eligible bachelor?"

"Shocking, I know."

"Whoever writes the society pages of the Daily Prophet will be disappointed."

"Imagine my consternation."

Voices drift up from the stairwell, rising until Potter and Ron appear through the trapdoor.

"They bloody are," Ron says, gesticulating wildly.

"You're wrong."

"I'm really not, mate. Hermione, the suits of armour. Sentient or enchanted to move?"

"Sentient."

"How can you possibly—" Harry starts, but is interrupted by Draco and Ron's chorus of, "_Hogwarts: A History_."

"What are we doing up here?" Ron asks, sitting down next to Draco.

He doesn't know why Hermione is so worried. It seems pretty clear to him that they're stuck with Potter and Co.

"Party at ours," George yells, coming through the trapdoor followed by Fred, Blaise and Longbottom.

"We need everyone's help to make decorations," Fred says.

"Harry, you're in charge of the food. Hermione, you get the music."

"And Malfoy, we can only assume that since we're all mates now, you're okay with us raiding your family's cellar for some of that expensive vintage you posh lot are so fond of. Everyone on board? Great."

Yeah. There's no getting rid of this lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! The Recruit is a prequel to [The Agency](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076104), so if you've enjoyed the story, give that one a try :)
> 
> A huge thank you to the mods of the Remix for all their hard work over the years. It's been a wonderful run!


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